The Batorego Oak and Ginkgo

Two protected trees stand two doors apart on ul. Batorego, a pedunculate oak at number 14 and a ginkgo at number 12, both entered onto Krakow's natural monument register on the same day in 1997. The oak is the thicker of the two, 336 centimetres around; the ginkgo measures 305. Neither has a documented age, and this is one case where guessing off the girth would mislead rather than help. Oak and ginkgo do not share a growth pattern with the ash and plane already published nearby, and no reliable published growth factor for either species in this climate was found this pass. What is verified is simpler and enough on its own: two long-lived species, planted close enough together to have been a deliberate pairing rather than a coincidence, both still standing on an ordinary residential street. Ginkgo is the more unusual of the two. Native to China and unrelated to any other tree alive today, the species survived the asteroid that ended the dinosaurs, and six ginkgos close to the 1945 blast at Hiroshima resprouted from scorched trunks and still stand there. This one has had an easier life, on a Krakow pavement, free to see at any hour.