Paavola's Oak

Finns call this the most beautiful tree in the country, and they were saying so a century before the internet agreed. The photographer and explorer I.K. Inha documented the oak over a hundred years ago, the magazine Tiede ja elämä wrote it up in 1920, and in autumn 2014 a piece by Antti Huttunen for Yle sent it round the country again to an audience that had never heard of it. The trunk runs to about 4.7 metres round. The reserve's own signage puts the age at 300 to 400 years, which is an estimate rather than a ring count, so the range stays as wide as the sign leaves it. The tree is a protected natural monument, and the grove around it, Paavolan tammikko on Lohjansaari, has been a nature reserve since 1994 for its herb-rich forest floor. Getting there is half of it. A marked trail of a kilometre or so leaves the old Lohjansaari school car park at Pietiläntie 23, with fifteen information posts along the way and a picnic table near the oak. Part of the surrounding grove is private land; the trail and the tree are the public part. A second protected oak, designated in 1990, stands along the same path, so the walk pays twice. Roughly an hour by car from Helsinki and no bus to the trailhead. Bring lunch and plan on the afternoon.