The Dominik Oak

Poleski National Park named an entire nature trail after this one oak. The Dab Dominik path runs 2.5 to 3.5 kilometres of boardwalk through wet broadleaf forest, peat bog and the reeded edge of Lake Moszne, and the tree is stop 3 on it. Dominik was a person. Professor Dominik Fijalkowski was a botanist who spent much of his working life arguing against the draining of the Polesie wetlands, the flat waterlogged country this park now protects. The trail that carries his name walks through it, and the oak stands on the trail. The trunk measures about 3.8 metres round, a figure that comes from the park's own 2007 guidebook. A visitor writing in 2024 found it still standing and called it one of the oldest trees in the region, though they took no measurement of their own. Nobody has dated it. Not the park, not the guidebook, not any source we can find, and a girth on its own will not give you a century without a local growth rate to go with it. So the oak keeps its age to itself. If you know it, or you have put a tape around this trunk yourself, tell us and it goes on the page. Getting there needs a car and a park ticket. The boardwalk does the rest.