Przybudki is a hamlet at the western edge of the Białowieża Forest, and its oak has already done more travelling than most trees ever do: national and then European Tree of the Year, back to back. Dąb Dunin is a low, sprawling reminder that fame does not require good luck. Lightning has broken its limbs more than once, and one assessment still warns the trunk could split. Free to see, a short drive or ride from Hajnówka or Białowieża village, and worth folding into the same trip as the forest itself.
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Photo: Leszek Jańczuk (CC BY-SA 4.0)
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Dąb Dunin
Pedunculate Oak (Quercus robur) · roughly 400 years · Przybudki, near Białowieża Forest
This oak won European Tree of the Year in 2022, a year after Poland voted it the best tree in the country. It is an odd sort of champion. At 13 metres it is low and broad, because lightning has broken its limbs more than once and turned what began as an upright, columnar tree into a lopsided sprawl. The trunk measures 5.3 to 5.5 metres round, and the damage is not finished with it: one assessment warns that the trunk could still split in half. It stands in the open at the edge of the hamlet of Przybudki, a remnant of the old Łacka Forest on the western side of Białowieża, and it has outlived the woodland it belonged to. Before it was Dunin it was Strażnik Puszczy, the Guardian of the Forest; Janusz Korbel gave it the newer name, after the Belarusian and Polish writer Wincenty Dunin-Marcinkiewicz. Poland made it a nature monument in 2001, when its age was put at 330 to 350 years, and by the time it took the European title it was being described as close to 400. Call it 350 to 450 years old, which covers both readings and the growing in between. There is no bus. You come by car or bicycle from Hajnówka or Białowieża village, and it is waiting where the trees stop.
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