The Ahtapot Çınar

Seven trunks that are actually one tree share a single root system at this bend in the Bahçeköy forest. Its lowest branches touched the ground centuries ago and thickened into limbs that now radiate outward like separate trunks, which is how a plane tree ends up nicknamed the Octopus. Turkish foresters put its age at up to 580 years, old enough that a local claim ties its early growth to the reign of Suleiman the Magnificent in the 1500s, though a more conservative reading of the trunk puts it closer to 400. Either figure makes it one of the oldest individually named trees in the city, and unlike most ancient planes, which grow as a single vertical column, this one spread sideways instead, its lowest limbs thick enough to sit on. At over 40 metres tall and more than 3 metres across at the base, it dominates a bend on the old road between Çayırbaşı and Bahçeköy, a stop on the hiking routes that cross Belgrad Forest today. Locals photograph it for the shape. Foresters study it for what centuries of horizontal growth actually does to a trunk that size.