What is the oldest tree in Oss?
The oldest firmly dated tree in the Oss area is the Lime of Macharen Church, which the national tree register puts in the decade 1830 to 1840, roughly 190 years old. A sycamore on the Ravenstein Maasdijk may be older still, but its band of 1800 to 1850 rests on the register's own presumption.
Every age on this page comes from the Landelijk Register Monumentale Bomen, which records a planting decade rather than a year, so each figure is a band. The register is the only written source for all five trees, which is why every entry is flagged. The Macharen lime's band, 1830 to 1840, is the firmest of the old ones. The Ravenstein sycamore's band reaches back to 1800, but the register only presumes it dates from the years when the dyke was lined with elms, which were felled in 1918; nothing documents it. Next comes the London plane in Lith's Huismanspark, put in the 1850s, the one kept of a pair whose other tree was felled before 2009. The silver maple on Gripper, the only one in Oss itself, dates from the 1890s and stood for years inside a closed factory yard. The youngest is Megen's Lulboom, a silver lime planted in 1937 for the wedding of Princess Juliana and Prince Bernhard. Macharen, Megen, Lith and Ravenstein are villages on the Maas within the municipality of Oss. All five trees are free to see at any hour.
One of Oss's trees also appears in The Tallest Trees We Have Measured.