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.
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Getting there
Paavola nature trail, Lohjansaari, Lohja (start from the old Lohjansaari school car park, Pietiläntie 23)
You can recognise it as the oak beside a picnic table on the marked Paavola nature trail, one of two protected oaks along the same path. It stands in Paavolan tammikko reserve on Lohjansaari.
Free. Stands beside a clearly marked 1 to 1.5km nature trail with 15 information posts inside the Paavolan tammikko nature reserve (protected 1994); a picnic table sits near the tree. Parking at Pietiläntie 23 (about 700m walk to the tree). Part of the surrounding grove is on private land per the reserve's own description, but the tree and the marked trail past it are open to the public.
No public transport to the trailhead; roughly 45 to 60 minutes by car from Helsinki (about 58km), or Lohja town by train/bus then a local taxi/car to Lohjansaari
In fruit
October to November: 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.
Sources
Where the facts on this page come from. The story was written with AI from these sources, and readers who know the tree correct it.