The Oak of Bergstraße, Oberhaching

This oak starts branching so low on its trunk that its crown has room to spread wide, and the photographer who documented it in 2021 left one piece of advice: see it from the west. That is where the spread shows best. It stands at the side of Bergstraße in Oberhaching, where the road climbs east out of the Gleißental valley and a footpath called the Kirchweg branches off north behind the tree along the edge of the slope. The Landkreis München protects it as a natural monument. Part of the slope wood behind it is protected too, as a separate monument called the Elf Eichen, the Eleven Oaks, so this is plainly a corner where oaks were thought worth protecting. The register says only Eiche, oak, without naming which one. If you can tell a pedunculate from a sessile oak by its acorn stalks, tell us. The pin is close but not exact: the register and the district list agree to within two metres, but no photograph confirms the trunk independently. On the ground, look for the broad oak at the roadside exactly where the Kirchweg leaves Bergstraße, rather than the trees in the wood behind it. The address beside it, Bergstraße 7a, is a private house, so look from the road and leave the property alone. No age, girth or height has been published. Oberhaching lies about 14 km south of Munich centre, a suburban trip; check MVV for the bus.