Šperberiai Oak

Oaks in this part of Europe usually spread rather than climb. This one is 32.5 metres tall, a height you would expect from a spruce, over a trunk 5.03 metres round. It takes its name from the Šperberiai family, who owned the Priekulė manor and the ground it grows on. Official recognition came late. A survey of the Priekulė district in 2017 turned up five natural heritage objects nobody had on the books, and on 16 April 2018 the environment minister's order No. D1-300 protected this oak among them. Four other trees on this list carry that same order, all of them within a walk of this one, in a town of a few thousand people. It stands on a slope in Vingis Park, roughly 120 metres in from the main gate, sixty metres from the Minija. When the river comes up the ground around the trunk floods, and the park keeps the spot cleared and maintained. Two things nobody has written down. There is no age on record, and the register says only ąžuolas, oak, without naming the species. Pedunculate oak is the overwhelming default in Lithuania and that is our assumption rather than a fact on file. If you know this tree, or you can tell a pedunculate from a sessile oak at a glance, tell us and we will correct the page.