The Ringstrasse Oak

The register calls this one simply Eiche, oak, and that omission is deliberate rather than sloppy. The same list names three other Heidelberg oaks precisely as Stieleiche, pedunculate oak, so when it declines to do so here it is telling us that nobody established which oak this is. We have kept it that way rather than tidying it up. Go and look: a pedunculate oak hangs its acorns on long stalks and has almost no leaf stalk, a sessile oak does the exact opposite. Whichever you find, tell us, and the page changes. It has been a protected natural monument since 14 October 1958, standing on the Ringstrasse where the number 26 tram stops, on the border between Kirchheim and the Bahnstadt. The Bahnstadt beside it has since been rebuilt from a railway goods yard into a residential district, so the ground on one side of this oak is entirely new. Nothing has ever been published about its age or its girth, and the pin comes from the register's coordinate rather than a reading at the trunk, so aim for the tram stop and look around. It sits a good two kilometres from the old town, so treat it as its own short trip rather than a stop on a castle walk.