The oldest and thickest tree in Kaunas inherited the job from one that was burned down. The original Peace Hill Oak, about 800 years old and 6.7 metres round, was already failing from storm damage in 2001 when an arsonist got to it. The park left it standing to die rather than felling it, and in that same year the sculptor Juozas Šlivinskas set a metal cross-section of a trunk beside it, its rings marked with dates from Lithuanian history. A second arson attack in 2007 finished the old tree off and it was taken away. A sapling stands on its spot. The name and the role went, on 25 October 2001, to this oak: a neighbour of roughly 600 years, made a Kaunas natural monument on that date. It measures 5.15 metres round at chest height and 21 metres tall, which makes it the largest and oldest tree both in the city and in the Kaunas Lagoon Regional Park around it. It gets looked after like a listed building. Internal rot is the ongoing problem, so the trunk is treated and disinfected periodically, damaged openings are covered over and dead branches are cut out. You will find it beside the cycle path through the Pažaislis wood, between the reservoir shore and the Pažaislis monastery, eight or nine kilometres east of the centre.
In fruit
September to October: acorns drop, and a good mast year buries the ground in them
The line is our estimate of how much there is to see, not a measurement. Typical for this species where this tree stands; exact weeks shift with the year.
Pažaislio šilas (Pažaislis pine wood), on the cycle path between the Kaunas Reservoir (Kauno marios) shore and the south side of Pažaislis Monastery, KaunasYou can recognise it as the largest, oldest oak in the wood, its trunk treated and its dead branches cut back. It stands beside the cycle path through the Pažaislis wood, between the reservoir shore and the monastery.
Free, in a public regional park (Kauno marios regioninis parkas), directly beside a public cycle/footpath
In Pažaislio šilas near Pažaislis Monastery, about 8-9 km east of central Kaunas; reachable by public bus toward Pažaislis then a short walk into the wood
Sources
Where the facts on this page come from.
- In the official register: Saugomų teritorijų valstybės kadastras (STVK), no. 0310505010188
- lt.wikipedia.org
- kauno.diena.lt
- Lietuvos Respublikos saugomų teritorijų valstybės kadastras (STVK), gamtos paveldo objektai, botanical objects, no. 0310505010188
