The Village Square Oak of Oberpoyritz

This oak was slowly dying of the village around it, and Dresden dug up its square to save it. Through the 1980s and 1990s its crown thinned and paled. The blame fell on the paving laid around the trunk, and possibly on a leaking gas main in the root zone. In 1998 the city rebuilt the site: the gas pipe was re-routed, and the roots were bridged under the driveways and the pavement. The diggers found thick roots five metres beyond the edge of the crown, which says something about how far an oak reaches for what it needs. Within a few years the crown had recovered. It stands free on the Dorfplatz of Oberpoyritz, the village's landmark. The city's records give it about 25 metres of height, a crown about 25 metres across and a trunk 4.30 metres round. The Viehbotsche brook runs between the tree and the house plots to the east and joins the Graupaer Bach about 40 metres to the south. On 10 June 1999 the city council made it natural monument ND 85, on the same day as the Luther Oak of Kleinluga, with a protected zone of at least 16 metres around the trunk. Its age is an estimate: in 2008 the city's environment office put it at about 150 years, which would place it in the middle of the 19th century. Nobody recorded the planting. If you know when it went in, tell us.