In the forest outside Sankt Vith, a tree and a saint stand together. The statue of Saint Anthony beside it gives the tree its name, the Antoniusbaum, and the pair is a popular goal for walkers in the Sankt Vither Wald. The German-speaking Community of Belgium put the area under landscape protection in 1985, and in 2007 the spot was restored through private local initiative, as the regional paper reported. It is free, in the public Sankt Vither Wald, and reached on foot along the forest paths.
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Antoniusbaum
species not established · not documented · Sankt-Vith, German-speaking Community of Belgium
This tree is known by the saint standing next to it. The Antoniusbaum takes its name from a statue of Saint Anthony beside it in the St. Vith forest, and it is the pairing, tree and saint together, that people walk out to see.
It is a named destination rather than a botanical record. In 1985 the German-speaking Community of Belgium put the Antoniusbaum area under landscape protection, which guards the setting as a whole rather than listing the trunk as a monumental tree. In 2007 the regional paper GrenzEcho reported the spot had been spruced up by private local initiative, and it is described as a popular goal for hikers in the Sankt Vither Wald.
That is close to everything on record, and we would rather say so than dress it up. No source we found names the species, gives an age or records a girth. The name is no help either: an Eiche or a Linde announces itself, an Anthony tree does not. A figure of "more than 300 years" circulates online, but we could not trace it to any page we trust, so it is not repeated here as fact.
What it offers is a walk through the forest to a place that people have kept tending, with a saint for company at the end. If you have stood under it and can say what kind of tree it is, or how big, tell us. You would be the first source.
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