Les Sept Frères de Gospinal

A nineteenth-century lawyer who owned the Gospinal estate received his clients inside this oak. There was room. Cut back in the middle of the eighteenth century, it regrew as seven trunks that have since fused into one body 7.67 metres round, the largest multi-trunk oak in Belgium, and the reason it is called Les Sept Frères, the seven brothers. It did other public work too. Officials of the communes of Sart and Jalhay used it as their meeting point when they argued out where the boundary between them ran. The measurements are recent and they agree with each other. The ministerial order that made it a protected monument in 2012 records a girth of 7.44 metres; a visit in 2021 measured 7.67 at seventy centimetres from the ground, roughly a centimetre a year of new wood in between. It stands 26 metres tall. Wallonia had already classified it as a remarkable tree back in 1987. The sign on site is blunt about the rest: over 300 years old, and nearing the end of its life. One of the seven trunks is dead and the others carry old wounds, though the account of that 2021 visit describes the canopy as still vibrant. Both of those things are true at once. It stands opposite the Gospinal forestry house, on the walking trail between Jalhay and Solwaster near the Hautes Fagnes.