The Oak of Cisarsky ostrov

Prague's very first legally protected oak grows on an island that used to flood every spring until imperial engineers tamed it. Cisarsky ostrov, Emperor's Island, took its name from Habsburg era work to control the Vltava, and this pedunculate oak has stood on its embankment road since sometime in the early 1800s, watching barges pass on the navigation canal beside it rather than the river itself. Prague declared it a protected memorial tree on 26 October 1994, the first oak in the city to receive that status, ahead of every other oak now on this list. Its trunk splits into branches unusually low, at just a metre and a half up, and the crown that results spreads wider than the tree is tall, a shape typical of an oak that grew alone in open ground rather than crowded by a forest. A 2013 measurement put the girth at 457 centimetres, and the tree is estimated at around 190 to 200 years old, above average for its age and size according to the city's own survey. It stands about 200 metres from the footbridge that connects the island to Stromovka, on a quiet embankment road most visitors to the park next door never think to cross.