What is the oldest tree in Robenhausen?
The Messikommer Eiche, beside the footpath through the Robenhauser Ried nature reserve on the southern shore of the Pfaffikersee. Over 500 years old and more than six metres round, protected since 1914 and named for the archaeologist who dug up the Stone Age lakeside village nearby. It is the only tree mapped here, published alone under the single-tree exception: the archaeology, not the town, is why people already come.
In 1858, workmen cutting a drainage channel near this oak turned up waterlogged timber from a Stone Age settlement, preserved so well in the wet peat that finds nobody expected to survive, textiles, tools, seeds, came up whole. The discovery was significant enough that archaeology now names an entire Neolithic period after the place: the Robenhausian. Jakob Messikommer, the local peat-cutter turned self-taught archaeologist who made it, had the oak beside his dig named for him in 1927, and the settlement is now part of a UNESCO World Heritage listing for prehistoric pile dwellings around the Alps. The tree was already centuries old when he found his timbers. Seegraben's council placed it under protection in 1914, its first conservation act, and bolted a plaque into the trunk in 1927. A 2005 lightning strike opened the hollow now visible at its base; a tomography ordered afterward found the wood sound enough to stand for years yet, with a recheck due within two or three years. No report since says the tree came down, though no newer scan has surfaced either, so treat that health record as dated and tell us what you find.
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