Seasons1 of 4
In 2020 this oak took 5,246 of the 24,839 votes cast in Strom roka and was named Slovakia's tree of the year, then went on to represent the country in the European Tree of the Year contest. Not bad for a tree standing at stop two of a village nature trail. It is reckoned at about 700 years old and it appears in Drnava's village chronicle from 1670, which means it was already old when anyone here first thought to write it down. It is not tall: 14 metres, modest for an oak of this age, with a trunk 528 centimetres round and a crown spreading 21 metres. Ancient oaks stop reaching up and start reaching sideways, and this one has been doing that for centuries. The ground around it has a stranger history than the tree does. Drnava was nicknamed Kis Pest, Little Pest, after the Andrássy ironworks that ran here in the nineteenth century and cast structural parts for the Chain Bridge in Budapest in the 1840s. The oak had already been in the village chronicle for 170 years by then, and it stands near that former works today. Open ground inside the village, free, nothing to book. It sits on the Poklady Drnavy trail, the Treasures of Drnava. The nearest station is Rožňava, then a regional bus.
From people who stood here
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Getting there
Poklady Drnavy educational trail, stop 2, northeastern Drnava, near the former Drnava ironworks site
You can recognise it by its low, wide-spreading shape, only 14m tall but a crown spreading 21m, sideways rather than upward. It stands at stop two of the Poklady Drnavy educational trail in the village.
Drnava village, Roznava District; nearest railway station is Roznava, then a regional bus to Drnava.
In fruit
September to October: acorns drop, and a good mast year buries the ground in them
The line is our estimate of how much there is to see, not a measurement. Typical for this species where this tree stands; exact weeks shift with the year.
Sources
Where the facts on this page come from. The story was written with AI from these sources, and readers who know the tree correct it.