The Oak of Nerthe (Chêne de Nerthe)
Nerthe, Magescq, Landes
Seasons1 of 4
In August 2010 this oak shed a single branch that measured 3.3 metres around. A month later, on 18 September, the A.R.B.R.E.S. association hung an Arbre Remarquable de France label on what was left: 6.50 metres of trunk at chest height, under a crown 27 metres up. It grew up alone. The oak stands on an airial, one of the clearings where Landes farmers built their houses among the pines, and the farm here is ruins. The nearest occupied house is two or three kilometres off down a forestry track. For most of its life its only visitors were whoever happened along that track, joggers and hikers and mountain bikers, and nobody wrote any of it down until the label arrived. Its age is an argument nobody has settled. Local tradition says 600 years, the official label rounds that up to 600 or 700, and growth-rate calculations worked from the girth come out lower, at 500 to 600. Nobody has cored it, so the honest answer is somewhere in the 500 to 700 range. After the branch came down, visitors reported the wound being dressed with tar, and they kept coming. Four separate hiking platforms now publish routes out to it, the newest of them from 2023. The last kilometre is on foot, which is a good part of why it stayed unknown for so long.
From people who stood here
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Getting there
In the pine forest near the hamlet of Nerthe, on an old airial (forest clearing with house ruins), commune of Magescq
You can recognise it by the trunk, 6.50 metres round at chest height under a crown 27 metres up. It stands alone on the old airial, a clearing in the pine forest, with the ruins of the farm buildings around it.
Free, on foot. The tree stands on privately owned pine-plantation land within an old airial but is openly and regularly visited by hikers, joggers and mountain bikers via a forestry track from the Nerthe hamlet (about 1km walk each way, difficult by car); no gate, fence or restriction signage was found in any source. The Magescq tourist office also runs a separate, optional guided minibus tour in summer (booking required for that specific tour only, not for general access).
No public transport reaches the site. Nearest town with an SNCF station is Dax (TGV), roughly 10km away; from there it is a drive to the forestry track near Nerthe hamlet, then a ~1km walk on foot.
In fruit
September to October: 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.