The Eira Sea Buckthorn

Sea buckthorn is a shrub by nature, the kind of scrubby, thorny plant that clings to Baltic sand dunes and rarely reaches head height. The one growing on Eira's shoreline forgot to read its own species description: over seven metres tall, a trunk more than a metre around, grown into something closer to a small tree than anything botanists expect from Hippophae rhamnoides. It stands on the Merisatama waterfront path directly across from the small island of Sirpalesaari, close enough to the Baltic that salt spray probably explains part of why it took root here in the first place. As a female plant it fruits every autumn, small orange berries packed with vitamin C that Finns have long picked for juice and jam, though this specimen has grown tall enough that harvesting from it would take a ladder rather than the usual bent-over shrub-picking. Nobody has dated it, since sea buckthorn does not get studied the way old oaks do, but its size alone earned it official protection as a natural monument in 1999. A short walk from the Eiran sairaala tram stop puts you right on the waterfront path beside it, no detour required if you are already out walking Eira's shore.