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Skarseken

SwedenGothenburgOrgryte

Years old300-500
Girth6 m
SpeciesPedunculate Oak

Approximate location.

Goteborgs-Posten calls this the only giant tree in Gothenburg with a plot of its own, and it means that literally: Skar 751:93 is a parcel of land that exists for an oak rather than for a building. On 14 October 2025 the city made the arrangement formal and declared the tree a naturminne, a nature monument, one of four oaks in Orgryte designated that day. Giant tree is a category here rather than a compliment. The county board of Vastra Gotaland applies it to trunks more than a metre through, and it rates this one sarskilt skyddsvart, specially worth protecting, standing inside an area the county has singled out for exactly such trees. Skarseken is a gransek, a boundary oak. Before the 1800s the farms out here, Garda and Stora Torp among them, marked their lines with trees instead of fences, and the oaks outlived the boundaries, then the farms, then the fields themselves. The city arrived, the streets bent around them, and the lines they hold are now nobody's. The city puts the four somewhere between 300 and 500 years old. No girth has ever been published for this one. If you bring a tape measure, we would like the number.

The tree's yearIn fruit
now JanFebMarAprMayJunJulAugSepOctNovDec

In fruit

October to November: acorns drop, and a good mast year buries the ground in them

The line is our estimate of how much there is to see, not a measurement. Typical for this species where this tree stands; exact weeks shift with the year.

Skarsgatan near Drakenbergsgatan, Orgryte, GoteborgThe one heavy old oak standing alone on its own small square of ground between the houses, much thicker than anything planted around it.

Free, standing on a residential street in Orgryte, viewable from public road

Tram to Danska vagen or Redbergsplatsen then short walk; roughly 15-20 minutes from central Goteborg

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