Plauginiai Forest maps two trees: an oak Lithuania signposts by name from the public highway, three and a half kilometres before you reach it, with a 400-metre interpretive trail, carved sculptures and a rest area built around it alone, and the Mikalojaus Dauksa Oak in Betygala, about 19 kilometres away, reached down purpose-built stairs from the town centre. Published thin because the Beautiful Oak is destination enough on its own, not because Plauginiai Forest's research is finished.
0 / 2 visitadas em Plauginiai Forest
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The Beautiful Oak of Plauginiai Forest
Pedunculate Oak (Quercus robur) · about 300 years · Plauginiai forest, Dubysa Regional Park
Lithuania signposts this oak by name from the public highway, three and a half kilometres before you get to it. Gražusis ąžuolas, the Beautiful Oak.
What waits at the end of the gravel road is a 400-metre interpretive trail built for one tree, with carved oak sculptures along it, a rest area with a pavilion and a fireplace, and a wooden acorn at the foot of the trunk carved with the tree's own measurements. The state forest service assessed it on 8 June 2017 and recorded 32 metres of height, 5.8 metres of girth at chest height and a condition of excellent. A local news report the following spring gave 5.8 metres and 33 metres, matching the acorn. Back in 1985 the figures were 28 metres and a diameter of 1.4 metres, so it has put on both height and thickness since somebody last got out the tape.
It has been a nature monument since 1960 and was raised to republic-level significance in 1985, which is when the state decided this particular oak in the Plauginiai forest reserve was worth pointing traffic at.
Its age is given as about 300 years by every source that mentions one, the wooden acorn included, and not one of them says where the number comes from. Nobody we can find has dated it properly. If you know who has, tell us.
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Mikalojaus Daukša Oak, Betygala
Pedunculate Oak (Quercus robur) · roughly 300 to 350 years · Betygala, Raseiniai district
The man this oak is named for helped give Lithuanian a written form, and he was the parish priest 300 metres up the slope. Mikalojus Daukša, priest and translator, held Betygala from 1592 to 1609, and local tradition has him sitting out by this oak.
Whether he planted it himself or somebody else planted it in his honour is, as the Lithuanian account of it says, hard to tell today. Nobody claims to know, and the tree carries his name for the association rather than for a documented act. The estimated age is about 300 to 350 years, given that loosely by the sources and left that loose here.
Two sets of measurements exist and they disagree a little, so both stand. The Lithuanian entry gives 28.5 metres of height and 4.90 metres of girth. The State Forest Service surveyed it in 2017 and recorded 28 metres and 4.7, in good condition, with a few old cut branches at three metres whose wounds have healed over. Betygala carries the oak on its coat of arms, which is the town's own verdict on the tradition.
Getting to Betygala means a car, by road 148 out of Raseiniai. From the centre it is a signposted 300 metre walk: a direction sign, an information board, and purpose-built stairs down the slope to the tree above the Vieviršė stream, inside Dubysa Regional Park. Plauginiai Forest's own oak is 19 to 20 kilometres off, a second stop rather than a continuation.
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