Gastilonys Oak

A tourism guide for the Kaišiadorys district calls this the thickest tree in the whole of Kaunas Reservoir Regional Park, and it grows at the mouth of one of the park's sights. The Gastilionys outcrop is a cliff and gorge cut into the valley, a geological viewpoint people come to see on its own account. The oak stands where the path into that gorge begins. The two sources that describe it do not quite agree on its size, and the reason is where they held the tape. The district guide gives 5.25 metres round and 21 metres tall. The state cadastre, as Lithuanian Wikipedia reports it, gives 5.50 metres and 25 metres, but measured at the base of the trunk rather than at chest height, which always reads fatter. Either way it is a big oak. It grows in mixed forest beside an old logging clearing, and the guide singles out its symmetrical branching, a crown built to take the strong winds that come off the reservoir. It has been protected as state natural heritage since 2008. The sources call it an oak without naming the species; pedunculate oak is the likely one, as the country's dominant native, but nobody has said so in writing. It is about 16 kilometres east of central Kaunas by road, toward Rumšiškės, and easiest by car. Nobody has published its age. If you know it, tell us.