The Caucasian Wingnut of Rengerspark

A large branch tore out of this tree and took much of the trunk with it. What is left stands as two halves, held by an anchor braced between them. The national register is not alarmed by that. It calls this wingnut one of the heaviest of its species in the Netherlands and the undisputed champion of Friesland, reads the wound as an early entry into the veteran phase, and says the tree can safely carry on for at least another decade. It is being left to age and decay where it stands, deliberately, for the wildlife that a rotting tree of this size supports. Rengerspark was a gift. The Rengers family handed the ground to Leeuwarden, Hendrik Copijn laid it out between 1902 and 1906, and the wingnut went in with that planting. In 2020 the municipality ran a public vote for the most beautiful tree in the district, and the big wingnut in Rengerspark was one of the ten on the ballot. Late summer is its moment. Caucasian wingnut is a walnut relative from the Caucasus, and it fruits in long green strings of winged nutlets that hang off the branches like beads on a curtain. For a champion it is strangely unmeasured: no girth, no height, no figure of any kind on record anywhere we can find. If you own a tape measure, we would like the number.