In 2016, 23,313 people across Europe voted for an oak in Hniszów, a village in the far east of Lubelskie near the Ukrainian border. It finished fourth in European Tree of the Year, having won the Polish national contest outright the year before. The Bolko Oak measures 874 centimetres round, near enough nine metres, and stands somewhere between 24 and 30 metres tall depending on who did the measuring. Its age is argued over rather than known. A 1984 assessment gave 623 years, which would put it around 660 today; published ranges run from 400 to 800, and most sources settle between 500 and 650. The name is not a king's. It belongs to Bolko Trzebiński, son of a former owner of the estate, who died in 1883 at the age of thirteen. There is a much older story attached to the tree as well, carried locally rather than recorded anywhere: that Bolesław Chrobry rested beneath it in 1018 on his march towards Kyiv. It is a legend and worth hearing as one. It is not evidence of anything, and anyone tempted to do the arithmetic from it should stop. Protected as a natural monument since 1959, the oak stands in what was the manor park and is now open ground beside the Bug. A signposted 1.2 kilometre trail runs past it and five more monumental oaks, and the Green Velo cycle route comes by the door.
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Getting there
ul. Lubelska 63, former manor park, Hniszów, gmina Ruda-Huta, Lubelskie Voivodeship
You can recognise it as the largest of six monumental oaks along a signposted 1.2km trail through the former manor park. It stands beside the Bug river in Hniszow, on the Green Velo cycling route.
Free, publicly accessible. Stands in a former manor park now open as a public green space beside the Bug river, on a signposted 1.2 km historical and educational walking trail past the oak and five other monumental oaks nearby. On the Green Velo long-distance cycling trail.
Rural village Hniszów, gmina Ruda-Huta, eastern Lubelskie Voivodeship, near the Bug river and the Ukraine border. No direct public transport to the site; reached by car or by the Green Velo cycle route.
In fruit
September to October: 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.
Sources
Where the facts on this page come from. The story was written with AI from these sources, and readers who know the tree correct it.