Before the First World War, the managers of the Auersberg estate tried to kill this oak by stripping away dozens of cartloads of soil from around its roots. It survived, and in 2024 the country voted it Czech Tree of the Year. It grows on the open ground of a former fortress at Lukavice, more than seven metres round and estimated at nearly 800 years old. About 24 kilometres away at Zamrsk stands the other winner: a lime that came back as six trunks from one cut stump, voted Tree of the Year nine years earlier.
0 / 2 in Lukavice besucht
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Lukavický dub (Dub na Hrádku / Dub u Lukavické tvrze)
Oak (Quercus sp.) · nearly 800 years · Lukavice, Chrudim District, Pardubice Region
Somebody once tried to kill this oak with a shovel. Before the First World War the management of the Auersberg estate had dozens of cartloads of soil stripped away from around its roots, which is a slow and deniable way to finish a tree. It is still standing, and in 2024 the country voted it Czech Tree of the Year.
It grows on the open ground of the Hrádek at Lukavice, the site of a fortress belonging to the local nobility, and it stood in that courtyard while the courtyard was still a courtyard. The trunk is more than seven metres round and the tree is 31 metres tall. Its age is estimated at nearly 800 years, which would put its first seasons somewhere in the thirteenth century; that is an estimate rather than a count, and the honest band around it is wide.
Eight centuries of standing still has turned it into a habitat rather than a tree. It carries its own fungi, beetles and bats, most of which need wood that has been dead for a long time inside a tree that is still alive. It has been legally protected since 1990.
The sources call it dub, oak, and go no further. If you can tell a pedunculate from a sessile by the acorn stalks, tell us which this is.
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The Six-Trunked Lime of Zamrsk (Sestikmenna lipa v Zamrsku)
Small-leaved Lime (Tilia cordata) · roughly 150 to 200 years · Zamrsk, about 4km northeast of Vysoke Myto
Somebody cut this tree down, and it came back with six trunks. The original stem had gone hollow and was taken off; six shoots rose from the stump, and those are what stands in the castle park at Zamrsk today. One lime, six stems, about 25 metres tall. Czech Wikipedia puts each stem at over two metres round, turistika.cz measures them between two and four, and nobody has folded that into a single girth figure because there is no single trunk to measure.
Its age is not settled either. Wikipedia says more than 150 years, turistika.cz says roughly 200, and neither explains how it arrived at the number, so the honest answer is somewhere in that band. What is dated is 1995, when the growth form alone was enough to make it a pamatny strom, a protected tree.
Nine years later the pupils of the local primary school put it forward for Strom roku, the national Tree of the Year, and the country voted for it. That makes two winners within about 24 kilometres of each other, since the oak at Lukavice took the same title in 2024.
The park is public and doubles as the grounds of the regional state archive. Blue waymarks bring walkers in from the stations at Dobrikov u Chocne and Vysoke Myto. Standing under it, the six stems read as a small grove until you follow them down to one stump.
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