Degsne maps three trees across Prienai district: a larch standing 49 metres tall in a stand planted in 1849, the tallest tree recorded anywhere in Lithuania, the Budininkai Oak, 31 metres tall and one of 47 oaks given nature-monument status in June 2026, 6.4 kilometres away in the same forestry district, and the Bagrenas Linden, a forked, hollowing lime on a village street 12 to 17 kilometres further out. Published thin because the tallest tree is destination enough on its own, not because Degsne's research is finished.
0 of 3 visited in Degsne
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The Degsnė Forest Larch
European Larch (Larix decidua) · about 175 years (planted 1849) · Degsnė Forest, Nemuno Loops Regional Park
The tallest tree in Lithuania is a larch, and it is under two metres round.
At 49 metres it beats everything else growing in the country, and the State Protected Areas Service register lists it under exactly that title. It is a demonstration of what larches do with their energy: nearly all of it goes upward. The trunk carries no green branch at all for its first 29 metres, and at chest height it measures 186 centimetres round. Anyone arriving with a churchyard oak in mind is looking for the wrong shape entirely.
It did not turn up by accident. The first larches here were planted in 1849, when this was a corner of the Russian Empire, and the stand they grew into is now the tallest forest in Lithuania, averaging around 42 metres. The forest was protected in 1960. This one tree was designated in its own right in 2002, by which point it had stood through two world wars and watched Lithuania become an independent country twice. A survey that year called its condition satisfactory, with the first signs of age on it.
No legend attaches to it, which feels right. The record is the story.
Getting there takes a car or a bicycle. A gravel forest road runs about three kilometres off the Kaunas to Alytus road north of Balbieriškis, and no bus goes near it.
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2
Būdininkai Oak
Pedunculate Oak (Quercus robur) · not documented · Būdininkai village, Balbieriškis Forest, Prienai district
The order that made this oak a protected national monument is dated June 2026, which makes it one of the newest protected trees in Lithuania and one of the least written about. It arrived on the list with 30 other oaks, a run of limes and six boulders. The same order draws a protection zone around the trunk: 0.041 hectares, roughly 410 square metres of forest floor that now belongs to the tree.
It is 31 metres tall and 4.85 metres round at chest height, standing in Balbieriškis Forest, 2,855 hectares of state forest in the Prienai district. Walk around it and it changes character. One side is in good order and carries heavy branches; the other is lichened over with damaged bark. That is what a large oak in a working forest actually looks like up close, and it is more worth the walk than a postcard specimen.
It has an official sibling. Būdininkų II was protected under the same order and stands nearby, which is how a forest ends up with numbered trees. Lithuania's tallest tree, a larch, grows 6.4 kilometres away in the same forestry district, close enough to make an afternoon of the two, though not close enough to walk between them.
Nobody has published an age for this oak. If you have seen a figure on a sign or in a survey, tell us.
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3
Bagrėnas Linden
Small-leaved Lime (Tilia cordata) · not documented · Bagrėnas, Prienai district
Measure this lime at chest height and you get 5.45 metres of single trunk. Half a metre higher it stops being one tree: the stem forks in two, and the base underneath it is hollowed and split open.
Lithuania made it a state-protected natural heritage object in March 2026 and drew a protection zone of 0.028 hectares around it, roughly 280 square metres of village ground that now belongs to the tree. The designation is that recent, which is also why almost nothing has been written about the tree. Beyond its register entry and a single Lithuanian reference page, it has gone undescribed.
What stands there is 27.5 metres of lime on the main street of Bagrėnas, beside an old homestead, at an address that reads Liepų gatvė 132. Linden Street.
Nobody has published an age. A girth on its own will not honestly produce one either, not for a lime: they fork, hollow out and put on wood at rates too variable for the arithmetic to mean much. If somebody has dated this one, tell us and the figure goes on the page.
Getting there means a car. Degsnė's other two trees stand 12 to 17 kilometres off in Balbieriškis Forest, which makes an unhurried afternoon of all three and is far more than anyone is walking between them.
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