The Columnar Oaks of Bassinplatz

Most oaks spread. These two go straight up. The pair on Bassinplatz are fastigiate oaks, a columnar form of the ordinary pedunculate oak that holds its branches close to the trunk and grows like a flame rather than a dome. Potsdam protects both as natural monuments, numbers 31 and 32, standing about forty metres apart on the same square. The surprise is in the register's tape measure. It gives the larger one 600 centimetres round, six metres of trunk, which is a girth you expect from a broad veteran in open parkland and not from a cultivar bred to stay narrow. The second comes in at a more ordinary 395. We have not been able to check the bigger figure, and a number that size on a columnar tree could be a measurement taken around more than one stem, so read it as the register's word until somebody confirms it. What is not in doubt is that both are standing: each was photographed in June 2026. The register gives neither of them an age, and nothing else we have found does either. They make an odd sight in a city square, two green columns where you would expect a spreading crown, and they are among the easiest protected trees in Potsdam to reach, on open public ground in the centre. If you know how old they are, or have run a tape around the big one yourself, tell us.