The Oak of Pettelaarse Schans

The earthwork under this oak is younger than the oak. Pettelaarse Schans was rebuilt into the star shape visitors walk today in 1959, during the works that made the Zuiderplas lake, and the register puts this pedunculate oak at about 120 years, which means it was planted around 1906 and was already full-grown when the diggers arrived. The site is far older than either. A fort stood here in the 17th century and was demolished in 1672, so the ring of trees on the mound traces a plan that has been dug, flattened and dug again. Then the caveat, because it decides whether you find the right trunk: three oaks stand within about fifty metres of each other up here. This is the thickest at 4.21 metres round, but its neighbour fourteen metres away runs to 3.52 and a third, forty-eight metres off, to 3.92, and telling them apart by eye is genuinely hard. The dependable anchor is the plane tree twelve metres away, a different species with pale flaking bark that nobody mistakes for an oak. Only the register names this individual tree. The fort's history is well documented; this particular oak's is not, and in late September the ground under all three is deep in acorns anyway.