The Storrada Oak

Two crowns married into this tree's name. Świętosława, daughter of Mieszko I and sister of Bolesław Chrobry, became queen of Sweden as the wife of Eric the Victorious and queen of Denmark as the wife of Sweyn Forkbeard. Scandinavians called her Storrada, the proud, and Miedzyzdroje gave that name to an oak on Kolejowa Street, a couple of hundred metres from Bolko, the oak named for her brother. Sources disagree on what it actually is. The town's own sign and the national nature-monument register both call it a sessile oak; an older regional survey from 2010 recorded it as the more common pedunculate kind. Nobody has settled which reading is right, so this page follows the tree's own sign. Either way it is a large one, 380 centimetres round and sixteen metres tall, standing over a public parking area where cars now sit in its shade. Miedzyzdroje designated it a natural monument in 2004, when its age was put at 150 to 200 years, closer to two centuries now. Sessile oaks range from southern Scandinavia down through Ireland and Britain to Italy, and their wood, harder than most people expect for a species softer than the pedunculate oak, has gone into furniture and boats for centuries.