Ancient Trees in Park Oliwski

A cucumber tree magnolia from the forests of eastern North America has reached 19 metres and a trunk 271 centimetres round, well past two metres of girth, which the city's own survey of protected trees singles out as one of the collection's standouts. A katsura from Japan, a species no European garden could plant before 1865, has split into three trunks and carries a smell of burnt sugar through its leaves every October, strong enough that people look around for a bakery. A western red cedar from the Pacific coast of North America stands 23 metres tall in a group registered as a single object alongside two yews and a Nootka cypress. The park's newest and oldest designations sit at opposite ends of the register. A pair of field maples was entered under one record on 26 February 2026, the most recent addition to Gdansk's roll of protected trees, named for the botanist Hugo Conwentz without any surviving explanation of why. The elm by the pond has been protected since 1 July 1988, its trunk 420 centimetres round, its Polish designation naming not the tree but the flowering ivy climbing it, ivy old enough to have reached the light it needs to bloom. Dutch elm disease killed most of the continent's big elms; this one, and the ivy on it, did not go. Most of these trees carry no planting date, only a girth and a registration number from 15 March 1992 or thereabouts. What is documented is precise measurement without a birthday, which the pages say plainly rather than guessing one.