Hendrik Lorentz got his monument in 1931.
Ancient Trees in Park Sonsbeek
Arnhem, Netherlands
Park Sonsbeek's oldest claim stands beside a monument to a man who never saw it planted: a pedunculate oak dated to somewhere between 1750 and 1800, growing next to the 1931 memorial to physicist Hendrik Lorentz.
The national register that puts an age on it is more taken with the shape than the years. Three more pedunculate oaks share the park with it, and no two came by their trouble the same way. Two stand together at the edge of the Sonsbeek meadow, thick and tall enough that the register flags both for condition rather than just girth. A third grows alone in a grazed field where the corner meets Sonsbeekweg, and the electric fencing kept up for the livestock has also kept surveyors from getting a tape around it properly for years. A fourth, by the old Witte Watermolen, carries no name and no plaque, only a regular stop on the park ranger's own guided walk each Open Monument Day. The other two trees break the pattern. A yew planted around 1850 has grown a waist over three metres round, genuinely rare for the species in the Netherlands. A small-leaved lime on the Zijpendaalseweg edge, 24 metres tall, is the species actually native to the Low Countries rather than the hybrid lining most Dutch streets. All six stand on open parkland, free to walk to any day of the year.
The park's own forest ranger stops at this tree.
One of the thickest oaks in Park Sonsbeek is also the one its surveyor is worried about.
Nobody has managed to measure this oak properly, and the reason is livestock.
In fruit
A yew with a waist over three metres is a rare object in the Netherlands, which is the national register's own judgement and the reason this tree is on the list at all.
Almost every lime along a Dutch street is a hybrid.
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