The Oak Behind the Ranger's Lodge, Čimický háj
Bohnice, Praha 8
Two great oaks stand behind this forestry lodge and only one of them is still alive. This is the living one, and it is the smaller and younger of the pair. The other, where the path meets the lodge, is five metres round and about three hundred years old, and what is left of it is a hollow trunk carrying a thin ring of living crown at the top, an owl inside and a colony of bees; it keeps its protection as a habitat rather than as a living tree. This oak is the one still putting on wood. It measured 3.55 metres round in 2011 and 3.81 when the register came back to it in August 2024, and it stands 32.5 metres tall, its crown carried upward rather than out. A 2013 survey put its age at about 180 years, which makes it roughly 190 now. Both trees were protected on the same day in 2004, and both sat for a portrait in 1969, when the painter Jaroslav Turek put the pair on one canvas. Only one of them has changed much since. Čimický háj around them is working woodland that Bohnice and Kobylisy have turned into weekend ground, walked, run and cycled through all year, and the building in front of the tree is still a forestry lodge. That 2024 measurement is the newest hard record anyone has of this oak. If you get out there, tell us how it looks.
From people who stood here
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Getting there
Čimický háj, behind the Čimická hájovna (forester's lodge), Praha 8-Bohnice
You can recognise it by being the healthy one of the two great oaks behind the forestry lodge: 3.81 metres round, with a full crown carried upward. Its neighbour is five metres round, hollow, and dead but for a ring of leaves at the top.
Free, inside Čimický háj, a public recreational forest between Bohnice, Kobylisy and Čimice used year-round for walking, running and cycling. The tree stands a short way past a fence behind the Čimická hájovna (a working forestry lodge), which prazskestromy.cz's own access note does not flag as restricted; the lodge area carries information boards as a marked point of interest. No source states the tree itself is closed to visitors.
Bus stop "Čimický háj" (lines 102, 144, 152, 177, 200), on the forest edge
In fruit
September to October: acorns drop, and a good mast year buries the ground in them
The line is our estimate of how much there is to see, not a measurement. Typical for this species where this tree stands; exact weeks shift with the year.
Sources
Where the facts on this page come from. The story was written with AI from these sources, and readers who know the tree correct it.
- In the official register: Památné stromy (AOPK ČR, Ústřední seznam ochrany přírody), no. 104833
- cs.wikipedia.org
- prazskestromy.cz
- gis.nature.cz
