The Ringstrasse Oak
GermanyHeidelbergKirchheim/Bahnstadt border
Approximate location.
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.
Ringstrasse, near the Ringstrasse tram stop, Kirchheim/BahnstadtYou can recognise it as the oak the register would not name: look at whether the acorns hang on long stalks and the leaves on almost none, then tell us. It stands by the Ringstrasse tram stop on line 26.
Free. Ringstrasse is a public street served by tram line 26 (Ringstrasse stop); the tree is a street tree, viewable at any time.
Tram line 26 to the Ringstrasse stop, then on foot.
Sources
Where the facts on this page come from.