The Oak of Fetscherplatz

In 1949 an architect built a tram shelter around this tree rather than move either of them. Herbert Schneider put his waiting kiosk on Fetscherplatz so close to the trunk that the roof had to curve to make room for the oak, four years after the air raids, in a city with more urgent things to be careful about. The two have shared the corner ever since. The tree is an overcup oak, a North American species and an unlikely thing to find holding down a square in Johannstadt. It went in around 1900, when the place was still called Fuerstenplatz, and it has since put out a crown about thirty-two metres across, wider than the tree is tall. That crown is effectively the roof of the square. Twenty-five metres up, 3.35 metres round at the trunk, and the only real shade anyone waiting for a tram is going to get. Dresden protected it as a natural monument on 3 January 1985, in the same council resolution that covered the plane tree on Albertplatz. If you are there in autumn, look at the acorns on the ground. The cup on this species swallows almost the entire nut, which is where the name comes from and the quickest way to tell it apart from every other oak in the city.