Miedzyzdroje protects thirty pomniki przyrody across its streets, and five of the oldest cluster within a few hundred metres of each other around Kolejowa and Lipowa streets. The Regalinda Oak, a sessile oak the town's own trail dates to 350 to 400 years, is the eldest by two centuries. A short walk up Kolejowa stand Bolko and Storrada, named for a Polish king and his sister; on Lipowa, near the parish church, stand Barnim and Apostoł, survivors of a nineteenth century avenue. All five are free to see, on public streets the town signs in three languages.
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Foto: Panek (CC BY-SA 3.0 pl)
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The Regalinda Oak
Sessile Oak (Quercus petraea) · 350 to 400 years · Międzyzdroje
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.
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Foto: Geonidiusz (CC BY-SA 3.0)
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The Bolko Oak
Pedunculate Oak (Quercus robur) · roughly 170 to 220 years, from a 150 to 200 year range recorded when the tree was registered in 2004 · Międzyzdroje
A stop sign, a pedestrian crossing and the corner of a shop have grown up around this oak, and a low chain fence is now the only thing keeping cars off its roots. It stands where Kolejowa meets Marii Dąbrowskiej, a few hundred metres from Miedzyzdroje's other protected roadside oaks.
The town named it Bolko, for Bolesław Chrobry, who ruled Poland as duke from 992 and was crowned its first king in 1025. Miedzyzdroje's own sign for the tree, one of eight stops on its trilingual Trail of Monumental Trees, calls it a living remnant of the primeval forest that once covered the grey dunes along this stretch of Baltic coast, from long before the resort town's streets and shopfronts existed.
The trunk measures 330 centimetres round and the crown reaches seventeen metres. The town's own register put its age at 150 to 200 years when it was designated a monument in 2004, closer to two centuries old today. Pedunculate oaks can live past 700 years and only stop growing taller after a century or two, so Bolko still has most of its climb ahead of it.
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Foto: Panek (CC BY-SA 3.0 pl)
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The Storrada Oak
Sessile Oak (Quercus petraea) · roughly 170 to 220 years, from a 150 to 200 year range recorded when the tree was registered in 2004 · Międzyzdroje
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.
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Foto: Panek (CC BY-SA 3.0 pl)
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The Barnim Oak
Sessile Oak (Quercus petraea) · roughly 200 to 220 years, from a 180 to 200 year range recorded when the tree was registered in 2004 · Międzyzdroje
This oak is what survives of a nineteenth century avenue that once led straight to Miedzyzdroje's parish church, and its old companion on the same planting, an oak called Apostoł, still stands close by on the same street.
The tree carries the name of Barnim IX, a Pomeranian duke of the House of Griffins who lived from 1501 to 1573 and patronised art and culture across Western Pomerania. Oak bark from trees like this one has a long history as a folk remedy, ground for its astringent, antiseptic properties and used on frostbite and burns, while its acorns feed the wild boars, jays and dormice that still live on the island of Wolin.
Miedzyzdroje designated the tree a natural monument in 2004, when it was judged 180 to 200 years old, putting it past two centuries today. The trunk is 301 centimetres round, the smallest girth among the town's five clustered Kolejowa and Lipowa street oaks, though still a serious size for a species whose growth turns from height to breadth after a century or two.
It stands free on the public street, a remnant of the avenue that used to run past it.
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Foto: Panek (CC BY-SA 3.0 pl)
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The Apostoł Oak
Sessile Oak (Quercus petraea) · roughly 200 to 220 years, from a 180 to 200 year range recorded when the tree was registered in 2004 · Międzyzdroje
This oak keeps the name of the apostle whose parish it has stood beside for two centuries: Piotr, Peter, patron of Miedzyzdroje's church, in front of whose rectory the tree grows on Lipowa Street. It and its neighbour Barnim, a short walk away, are what is left of a nineteenth century avenue of oaks that once lined the approach to the church itself.
At 370 centimetres round and nineteen metres tall, it is a genuinely large sessile oak. Poland's oldest documented specimen of the species, in Turawa, is dated to 370 years by written record, and the widest anywhere in the country reaches just over 600 centimetres, in the Skierniewice forest district. This one sits well inside both marks. Miedzyzdroje registered it as a natural monument in 2004, at an estimated 180 to 200 years old, putting it past two centuries by now.
It stands free on a public street beside the rectory, one of five protected oaks within a few hundred metres of each other in this corner of Miedzyzdroje, along with Barnim, Bolko, Storrada and the older Regalinda a short walk away on Kolejowa.
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