The Maples of Hugo Conwentz

Gdansk's newest protected tree is not one tree but two. On 26 February 2026 the city council entered a pair of field maples standing side by side in Park Oliwski onto Poland's register of natural monuments under a single record, the most recent designation on a city roll of 157 protected trees. The larger has a trunk 245 centimetres round and stands 19.5 metres; its companion measures 180 centimetres and 17 metres. Field maple is a slow, modest species that rarely gets big, and 245 centimetres is a considerable size for it, which puts these two somewhere around 150 to 200 years old. That figure comes from the trunk rather than from a document: no planting record has turned up. The name is the other half of it. The register calls them Klony Hugo Conwentza, the Maples of Hugo Conwentz, after the botanist who ran this city's provincial museum and who is widely credited with founding the world's first state conservation agency, the Prussian office for the care of natural monuments, in 1906. The category these two maples have just been entered under is the one his office existed to administer. What the register does not say is why these particular trees carry his name. If you know, tell us.