The Schulgasse Oak in Hötting

The survey that lists Innsbruck's natural monuments did not put a number on this oak's age. It simply called it very old. It gave the rest. This pedunculate oak stands almost 30 metres tall, and its trunk measures three and a half metres round, by the Land Tirol survey's figures, which carry no date of measurement. Those are big numbers for any oak, and this one grows not in a park but at a fork in a lane in Hötting, where the Schulgasse meets the access road to the old people's home. It was put under protection in 1940, in the middle of the war, and has held that status for more than eighty years. The register records the protection, not the planting, and "very old" is the survey's word, not a date. Nobody has published anything firmer. If you know how old it is, tell us. It makes an easy pairing with the two old black locusts beside the Hötting church and cemetery, a short walk away, so one trip up to Hötting covers both. The pin is the register's point, good to a few tens of metres; at nearly 30 metres, the oak is easier to find than the dot. It stands on a public lane and costs nothing to see.