The Three Oaks of the Weinmeisterweg

A German tree archive says one of the trunks here is really two oaks grown into one. Potsdam protects three pedunculate oaks behind the last houses of the Weinmeisterweg in Sacrow as natural monument number 12, and gives them girths of 470, 560 and 650 centimetres. The Ostdeutsches Baumarchiv, a private record of old trees, counted them differently on its 2021 visit: one oak at 589 centimetres, and a twin, fused at the base and grown together above chest height, which it could only tape as a single trunk of 673. The two sets of numbers do not quite meet. The twin comes out larger than the register's biggest oak, which fits a tree that kept growing after the city measured it, or a tape held at another height. The register does not say when it measured, so both figures stand here and neither is corrected into the other. The city protects them for science, rarity, distinctiveness and beauty. It gives no age, and nobody we have found has dated them. Getting there means passing the last houses at the forest edge. The map shows a bollard on the way in that lets walkers through, with private gates and a private service road close by. Keep to the public way and out of the gardens. The latest sighting we know of is that 2021 visit. If you go, tell us they still stand. The thousand-year oak in the Schlosspark is about 500 metres away.