The Pear Tree in the Middle of the Field

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.