Seasons1 of 4
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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Getting there
Przybudki, edge of the Lacka Forest section of Białowieża Forest (Puszcza Białowieska), Podlaskie Voivodeship, Poland
You can recognise it by its low, lopsided crown, broken open by repeated lightning strikes, on a trunk about 5.4 metres round. It stands in the open at the edge of Przybudki, on Bialowieza's edge.
In the hamlet of Przybudki on the western edge of Białowieża Forest. No public transport reaches the tree directly; nearest access is by car or bike from Hajnówka (the district town) or Białowieża village, both a short regional drive away.
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.