Bošáca maps two trees from the same hillside hamlet, Zabudišová, and both are national champions. An heirloom apple, about 130 years old, won Slovakia's Tree of the Year contest in 2017 and placed sixth in Europe; a rare pink-fleshed pear, roughly 200 years old, won it in 2015 and placed third. They stand 350 metres apart, on ordinary farmland, planted for their fruit rather than for looking at. No other Slovak village has produced two national tree champions from one small stretch of ground, and both still bear fruit every year.
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Foto: Martin Babarik (CC BY-SA 4.0)
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The Apple Tree of Zabudišová
Apple (Malus domestica 'Citrónové zimné Zabudišovské') · roughly 130 years · Zabudišová, Bošáca
In 2017 a nearly forgotten apple variety beat every other tree in Slovakia to become that year's national Tree of the Year, then went on to place sixth in the European final the following spring.
Nobody had paid the tree much attention before the contest. It grows on a roadside in Zabudišová, a scattered hamlet of the village of Bošáca, and belongs to Citrónové zimné Zabudišovské, a lemon-yellow winter apple bred locally and grown almost nowhere else. Itinerant fruit-growers, tradesmen who planted orchards for a living and moved on, are thought to have put it in the ground roughly 130 years ago. When it won, it measured two and a half metres round and stood thirteen metres tall, dimensions that make sense for an apple tree left alone for well over a century.
It still fruits. The variety's practical value, a fruit that keeps through winter without a cellar, is presumably why somebody planted it here in the first place, long before there was a competition to win.
Three hundred and fifty metres away, on the same hillside, stands another Slovak Tree of the Year: a pink-fleshed pear that won two years earlier. Two national champions from one small stretch of Zabudišová, which almost nobody outside Bošáca seems to know.
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Foto: Alena Hroncová (CC BY-SA 4.0)
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The Pink Pear of Zabudišová
European Pear (Pyrus communis 'Bošácka ružová') · roughly 200 years · Zabudišová, Bošáca
Slovakia's national tree contest has been won only once by a pear, and this pink-fleshed local variety is it.
Bošácka ružová grows almost nowhere outside this stretch of the Bošáca countryside: a pear whose flesh runs pink rather than white, a curiosity local orchardists have kept going for generations. In 2015 it won the national Strom roka title, then went to the European final and placed third, an unusually strong result for a tree nobody outside its own region had heard of a year earlier.
Local tradition holds that it was planted by the area's first settlers, known for making fruit brandy from orchards like this one, though nothing pins that to a date. Two separate outlets covering its 2015 win, pravda.sk and teraz.sk, independently give its age as about two hundred years, which this page repeats with confidence. Nobody has published a reliable girth or height for this specific tree, so those stay open. What is confirmed, from the region's own tourism writing, is a solitary tree on open land near Zabudišová, unfenced and reachable without asking anyone.
It stands 350 metres from another national champion, an heirloom apple that won two years later. Two prize-winning fruit trees, in one small corner of western Slovakia, planted for eating rather than for looking at. If you have measured its girth, tell us.
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