Ancient trees in Poland

Krakow's Henryk Oak is named for a man who lived beside it from 1923 to 2010 and saved it from a wartime felling order, though the tree predates him by a century, the last survivor of a forest the village grew up around. Warsaw's oldest carries a grander name and an honest gap: Dab Mieszko I, six hundred to six hundred forty years old, is named for the ruler who brought Poland into recorded history, though it began growing centuries after his death. It survived a 2019 arson attack and stands propped and cabled, one of the last fragments of wild forest inside the city. Five cities are mapped so far, running centuries younger than equivalents further west, less for lack of old ground than a twentieth century that spared little of it.