The Bolko Oak

A stop sign, a pedestrian crossing and the corner of a shop have grown up around this oak, and a low chain fence is now the only thing keeping cars off its roots. It stands where Kolejowa meets Marii Dąbrowskiej, a few hundred metres from Miedzyzdroje's other protected roadside oaks. The town named it Bolko, for Bolesław Chrobry, who ruled Poland as duke from 992 and was crowned its first king in 1025. Miedzyzdroje's own sign for the tree, one of eight stops on its trilingual Trail of Monumental Trees, calls it a living remnant of the primeval forest that once covered the grey dunes along this stretch of Baltic coast, from long before the resort town's streets and shopfronts existed. The trunk measures 330 centimetres round and the crown reaches seventeen metres. The town's own register put its age at 150 to 200 years when it was designated a monument in 2004, closer to two centuries old today. Pedunculate oaks can live past 700 years and only stop growing taller after a century or two, so Bolko still has most of its climb ahead of it.