The Akmenynė Oak

Four and a half metres of trunk, and the Lithuanian state did not get round to protecting it until April 2017. The Akmenynė oak stands on a slope above the Jūra river outside Pajūris, in the Šilalė district, 24 metres tall and 4.45 metres round at chest height. It grows on open ground above the water rather than inside a wood. Six or seven kilometres east, in Pagramantis Regional Park, four registered oaks run from 4.3 metres round up to a hollow giant of 6.30, and by trunk alone this one belongs in that company. The park's own cycling route does not reach this far west, so this oak is a trip of its own. Two records name it and put it on this slope. Only one of them, the Lithuanian encyclopaedia entry, carries the measurements, and neither carries an age. No ring count, no growth-rate estimate, not even a local tradition of the kind the Gudlaukis oak up the valley has collected. The ministry order of 10 April 2017 is the oldest dated fact anybody has recorded about a tree that was already this size when it was signed. So the trunk is the whole of the evidence, and it is enough to be worth the detour. If somebody has dated this oak, or measured it since, tell us.