The Pear Tree in the Middle of the Field
Approximate location. Show us where it is
How do I find it? You can recognise it by the lopsided crown, pushed out of shape by the west wind, and by the fact that it is the only tree there. It stands alone in the field north of Mrákotín, opposite the farmstead on the road to Malinné.
Most Czechs can sing about this tree before they ever see it. The folk song "Stojí hruška v širém poli", a pear tree stands in the open field, belongs to this one: a solitary pear in arable land north of Mrákotín, with nothing else on the horizon. At roughly 110 years it is old for its species, which rarely passes 200. It has outlived most of what the twentieth century did to the fields around it: collectivisation, the consolidation of smallholdings into large blocks, drainage works that took water out of the ground it stands in, and some inexpert pruning. Protected status arrived on 11 April 1996, late in its life. The wind did the shaping. Nothing stands between it and the west, so the crown grew lopsided, and from a distance it reads as a tree leaning away from something. Eight metres tall and 183 centimetres round: small, and the only thing in view for a field's width in any direction. In late April it flowers white, which in an otherwise empty field you can see from the road long before you reach it. In 2023 it won the Czech Tree of the Year vote with 6,433 votes and went on to the European final. A pear tree in a field, elected.
- Species
- European Pear (Pyrus communis)
- Girth
- 1.83 m
- Location
- In an open field north above the village of Mrákotín, opposite a farmstead, near the road to Malinné, Chrudim District, Pardubice Region (Mrákotín (okres Chrudim))
- Access
- Free. Stands alone in a working arable field beside the road to Malinné; no formal marked trail found, but a tourism source describes reaching it 'without problems' along the field edge even when the surrounding field is sown with crop. Informal field-edge access rather than a paved path.
- Getting there
- Rural, no public transport nearby; reached by car or on foot from Mrákotín village, Chrudim District.
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Sources
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Ticking this one off, walks past several more, and your collection growing city by city: that is the Ancient Trees app.
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