Jērcēni is a rural parish in Valmiera municipality, and its tree stands beside a farmstead outside the village. The Kaņepju Oak has a lightning-split trunk more than nine metres round, hollow enough that eight people are said to fit inside, and visitors have carved their names into it since at least 1886. Its age is disputed between 450 and 800 years, though a ring study suggests closer to 825. Latvia lists it as an archaeological cult site, and in 1933 a national competition named it the mightiest oak in the country.
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The Kaņepju Oak
Pedunculate Oak (Quercus robur) · 450 to 800 years · Jērcēnu parish
The hollow inside this oak is said to hold eight people. A lightning strike, reportedly in the nineteenth century, split the trunk and left a hollow with three openings, and visitors have been carving their names into it since at least 1886.
The trunk is more than nine metres round, between 9.2 and 9.4 depending on who held the tape, which makes it the second-thickest ancient oak in Latvia and in the Baltic states. It is sixteen or seventeen metres tall, with a crown about nineteen metres across, and it stands beside the Kaņepju farmstead outside the village of Jērcēni.
How old it is depends on whom you ask. The figure most often quoted is anywhere from 450 to 800 years. A dendrochronological study by S. Salins went further and dated it to around 1200, the years when Bishop Albert was pushing into Livonia, which would make it roughly 825. Both numbers are in circulation and nobody has settled it.
The state settled something else. Latvia lists the oak on its register of archaeological monuments as a cult site, a tree believed to have been sacred before Christianity reached these fields. Latvians had already crowned it once: in 1933 a competition run by a leading Latvian publication named it the mightiest oak in the country.
The farmstead beside it is private. The oak is signposted as a sightseeing object, and the approach to it is open to anyone.
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