The Regalinda Oak

Miedzyzdroje named its oldest oak after a princess who lived six centuries before it did. Regalinda was a daughter of Boleslaw the Brave and sister of King Mieszko II, who left Poland in the eleventh century to become Margravine of Meissen. The tree carries her name by tradition, not by any claim it stood in her lifetime; against its own trunk that would put a thousand years on a tree the town dates at less than half of that. What the town does claim, on its own numbered walking trail, is that the oak remembers the Baroque rather than the Middle Ages: 350 to 400 years old, the oldest specimen on the eight-stop Trail of Monumental Trees that Miedzyzdroje signs in three languages through its own streets. The trunk backs that up without pinning a single year down, 470 centimetres round under a crown fifteen metres wide. It is a sessile oak, not the pedunculate kind that fills most of Poland's protected lists: its leaves sit almost stalkless on the twig while its acorns hang on long stems, the reverse of its cousin's habit. The town council protected it by resolution in 2004 and has kept the order in force since. One coincidence worth naming plainly: the address it shares belongs to a small aparthotel called Zlota Regalinda, which took the tree's name rather than the other way round. The town's own trail treats the oak as stop eight, open to anyone walking it.