The Geniai Oak

Two and a half kilometres from a hollow, lightning-wrecked oak stands the version that got away with it: the same species, the same park, nearly the same waistline, and no damage at all. The Geniai oak measures 5.8 metres round in one survey and 5.6 in the other, and reaches 26 metres in the first and 25 in the second. Nobody has reconciled the two, which is what happens when a tree is measured twice, years apart, by people who had no reason to compare notes. The Lithuanian record puts it among the largest oaks in the country, and both records agree it is in vigorous health, which at that girth is the rarer half of the sentence. It grows about 150 metres back from the right bank of the Jura, reached by a gravel road and then a stretch of meadow, with an information board and arrows to bring you in. Lithuania listed it as a state-protected natural heritage object in February 2016, in the same ministerial order that covers the Gudlaukis oak. What it does not carry is a date or a legend. No ring count, no planting record, nobody's grandfather stopping here. Oaks this thick in Lithuania generally run to several centuries, but that has never been established for this one. If you know of an age with a source behind it, tell us.