The Andriejaiciai Oak

By local telling, the oak that stood here before this one had a hollow big enough to shelter five calves, and Vytautas the Great stopped his retinue under it for a meal on his way through. Both sources repeat the story. Neither offers any evidence for it, and Vytautas died in 1430, so whatever the legend belongs to, it is not the trunk standing here now: both records put this tree at over 300 years, which is an estimate nobody has checked against rings. What can be measured is agreed on. Five metres round at chest height, give or take ten centimetres, and 26 metres tall, which makes it a tall oak rather than a squat one. It grows on the rim of the Akmena river valley, at the end of a village street called Azuolo gatve, which is Lithuanian for Oak Street. Old crosses still stand underneath it, left from a small cemetery that once occupied the ground and is otherwise gone. Silale district listed the tree as a protected natural heritage object in 2006. Read the 300 years as a floor rather than a figure. Nobody has cored it, and the two records that give an age both give the same round number without saying where it came from. If somebody has a dated measurement, we would like to hear it.