The Oak on the Dam of Libocky Pond

On paper this oak lost seven centimetres of waistline in nine years, which is not something living oaks do. A measurement taken in June 2015 put it at 424 centimetres round. The Czech nature agency's own 2024 update of the memorial-tree register says 417. Somebody remeasured, or somebody rounded, and the register's newer figure is the one carried here. Either way it is a big tree: more than four metres of trunk standing on the northwest dam of Libocky pond, between the water and the footpath, with nothing next to it competing for light. That open position is why the state protected it on 13 July 2004. The designation cites its dominance and its typical pond-edge habit, and draws a circle of protection thirteen metres out from the trunk. Nobody has dated it. Working from the girth and the growth rates Prague's other registered pedunculate oaks run at, a shade over two centimetres a year, it lands somewhere between 165 and 210 years old. That is an arithmetic answer rather than a measured one, and if anyone has a better figure we would like to hear it. The dam itself was rebuilt in 2017, gaining stone steps and a wooden rest platform; people fish from the embankment. The oak came through the works and the last visit on record found it in very good health.