The Plague Oak of Pesterwitz

This oak was planted in 1681 as a timber investment, and nobody ever collected. The parish of Pesterwitz put it in together with several other trees, meaning to sell the wood one day. The others are gone. This one still stands on the bend at the entrance to the village, on the road called An der Winzerei near the church of St. Jakobus. Its name comes from the calendar rather than from any record of why it went in: 1680 and 1681 were plague years, and the tree became the Pesteiche, the plague oak. It has come close to the axe since. In the Second World War it was marked to be felled for a tank barrier, and it survived that too. Today it is over 20 metres tall, the regional tourism office says almost 22, with a trunk more than five metres round. The crown needs help to hold together: it is secured with ropes, and another brace went in with the pruning of 2023. The custom of naming a tree for an epidemic did not end with it. In 2021 a young oak was planted near the old Winzerei and called the Corona oak. Pesterwitz belongs to the town of Freital, just west of Dresden, which protects the oak as one of its natural monuments. It stands right on the road with no verge or bench, so this is a tree to look up at from the roadside rather than to sit under.