Renavas Thick Spruce

In December 2024 Lithuania held a public vote for its most interesting protected spruce, and this tree beat the tallest spruce in the country. It is also reckoned the thickest. The trunk measures 3.93 metres round at chest height and carries 36.5 metres above it, a figure the national broadcaster rounds up to 37. Its closest surviving rival, a spruce in the Plokščiai forest, comes in at 3.87. The tree that held the record before it, at Gelgaudiškis, was 3.35 metres round and was felled in 2009 after it died. This one nearly went first. In 1994 bark beetles moved into the park at Renavas. The spruces around it died and were cut down in 1999. This one saw the infestation off, and its wood still carries the holes and the resin scarring. The state has been watching it a long time: protected since 1960, raised to republic-level significance in 1987, entered in the national register of natural heritage objects in 2005. The register gives its presumed age as 150 years, a single figure rather than a measured range. It stands in the manor park at Renavas, deep in Žemaitija, fenced and with its own information board, about a hundred metres from the footbridge over the Varduva. The manor museum charges admission. The spruce does not.