The Tullisaari Burl Pine

Trees of this kind rarely pass ten metres. This one is nineteen. Pinus sylvestris f. gibberosa is a rare natural growth form of the ordinary Scots pine, scattered thinly through southern and central Finland, in which the trunk, the branches and even the roots swell into woody lumps. In Finnish it is the mukuramänty, the burl pine. It is a shape rather than a separate species, and it usually comes with a stunted, low-slung habit, which is what makes this one strange: it grew the lumps and then grew tall anyway. The Provincial Government of Uusimaa protected it on 20 September 1956, decision number 8805. At its last measurement, in 2003, it stood nineteen metres, with a trunk 175 centimetres round, or 225 if you run the tape over the burls rather than between them. It is one of seven protected natural monuments in Laajasalo, out of thirty-three in the whole of Helsinki, and the local residents' association still sends people to it: the eastern end of Kumianpää, beside a public path, no gate and no ticket. The Tullisaari Lime, already on this list, stands four hundred metres away in the old manor park. Nobody has dated it, and the growth form makes the usual girth arithmetic useless, so its age is an open question. If you know when this one started, tell us.