Estonia's largest tree by volume is not an oak or a lime. It is a pine, more than 33 metres tall, standing beside a forest road south-east of Tartu, and people call it the King's Pine. The Kuningamänd grows in Järvselja, the training forest of the Estonian University of Life Sciences. Its trunk is only 3.25 to 3.4 metres round, depending on which source measured it, which would be ordinary for an old oak. The size is in the height. A crown some 23 metres across sits on top, and the whole tree holds 11 to 13 cubic metres of timber. The university gave its age as about 380 years in 2021. That is an estimate rather than a ring count, but if it holds, the pine was a seedling when Tartu's university was newly founded under Swedish rule, and it has stood through every change of flag since. It has been protected since 6 August 1958 and has its own entry in the national environmental register, which is more than most forest pines get. In 2022 it represented Estonia in European Tree of the Year and finished 13th. The tree is a single pine by the road, so it is easy to find. Leaving the road is another matter: the forest is a protected area, so check the reserve's rules before you walk in closer.
Beside the Liispõllu-Järvselja-Aravu road, Järvselja protection zone, Kastre Parish, Tartu County, Estonia You can recognise it by its height, more than 33 metres, on a trunk about 3.4 metres round. It stands right beside the Liispõllu-Järvselja-Aravu road, a single pine.
Free to see: it stands beside a public forest road inside the Järvselja nature protection area and is visible from the road. Check the reserve's visitor rules before leaving the road.
Järvselja, Kastre Parish, Tartu County, beside the Liispõllu-Järvselja-Aravu road; reached by road from Tartu.