Višňová maps one tree, and the village put a bench under it for what it did. On the night of 7 August 2010 a flash flood broke the Smědá's banks and the Guardian Oak, standing beside the bridge in the hamlet of Víska, caught the trees and debris the water was carrying and kept the jam out of the houses downstream. Three years later it won the Czech Tree of the Year vote, then placed fifth in Europe in 2014. Free, on a public road at the edge of the settlement, no ticket or gate.
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The Guardian Oak of Víska
Pedunculate Oak (Quercus robur) · roughly 150 years · Víska (part of Višňová)
On 7 August 2010 this oak stood in the way of a flood and held. The Smědá broke its banks that night and came down through Víska carrying whole trees, and the oak caught them against its trunk and kept the jam out of the houses below. Local accounts credit it with saving a couple and their dog as well. Three years later the country voted it Tree of the Year, and in 2014 it placed fifth in Europe. Locally it is Dub ochránce, the Guardian Oak.
It is not an ancient tree. Roughly 150 years, which is early middle age for a pedunculate oak, 455 centimetres round and 20 metres tall. Nobody has dated it more precisely than that, so if you know when it went in, tell us. Arborists pruned the crown in September 2014 to keep it sound, which is what a village does for a tree it owes something to.
It stands at the southern edge of the settlement, beside the road and the footbridge over the same river. There is a bench under it now and a board explaining what happened. Both arrived after the water did.
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