The Wola Justowska Oak

This is one of the newest names on Krakow's monument register, a list whose earliest entries reach back to the 1960s. The national record enters the oak in January 2016, the city's own list says 2015, and the two agree on everything else, including a trunk of 351 centimetres. It stands at the junction of ul. Dunin-Wasowicza and ul. Lowiecka in Wola Justowska, the villa district on the western edge of the city, on the way out to the woods of Las Wolski. That is about twenty minutes on foot from the Main Square and a little off the run of the other trees here, so treat it as its own stop rather than a link in a chain. Pedunculate oak is named for its acorns, which hang out on long stalks while the leaves sit almost flat against the twig with two small lobes curling back at the base like ears. It is also the oak of Polish national memory, the species behind Bartek and the Rogalin veterans. Nobody has recorded its age. No planting record survives for a suburban junction, and the other register oaks in this city carry no age either, so there is nothing local to measure 351 centimetres against. Someone who has lived on that corner for fifty years knows more than the register does. If that is you, tell us.