's-Gravenvoeren is a village of Voeren, in the hilly Flemish exclave between Maastricht and Liège, and its mapped tree has spent its life absorbing other people's problems. At least eighty nails are hammered into the dead side of the Nagelboom, a horse chestnut nail tree: a cloth rubbed over an ailment, then driven into the bark with a nail, was supposed to carry the ailment away. It was once a finalist for European Tree of the Year and is in poor condition today, at a crossing of two hollow roads southwest of the village church.
0 / 1 visitados en 's-Gravenvoeren
1
Nagelboom van 's-Gravenvoeren
Horse Chestnut (Aesculus hippocastanum) · 's-Gravenvoeren (Voeren), Province de Limbourg
At least eighty nails are hammered into the dead side of this horse chestnut, and that is the whole point of it. A nagelboom is a nail tree: you rub a nail over whatever hurts, then drive it into the trunk, and the ailment is supposed to travel into the wood along with it. The nails go into the back of the tree, where part of the trunk has already died, which is the part that takes them.
It stands where two hollow roads cross at the Heuvelke, about 350 metres southwest of the Sint-Lambertuskerk in 's-Gravenvoeren. The crossing is thought to follow the line of the Via Mansuerisca, a Roman road, which is a reading of the landscape rather than a settled fact.
Its condition is not good and both the Dutch record and the Flemish heritage inventory say so plainly. A successor has already been planted nearby against the day it goes. It was also a finalist for European Tree of the Year, which is a strange pair of things to be at the same time, and it is still standing.
Nobody has recorded its age or its girth. The nails are the only count anybody has taken of it, and they were put there one ailment at a time.
Leer más y cómo llegar →