Rogalin is a village south of Poznan built around a palace, and beside it stand two of the three oaks named for the legendary brothers who founded Poland, Bohemia and the Rus. Rus, at 9.15 metres round, was cored by the Institute of Dendrology in 2019 and dated to 800 to 850 years, the oldest dated oak in Poland. Lech, ninety metres away, is nearly as thick and has never been dated at all. The third brother, Czech, died in 1992; its trunk still stands nearby. Free and walkable, beside the palace grounds.
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Pedunculate Oak (Quercus robur) · several centuries · Rogalin, Greater Poland Voivodeship (Rogalin Landscape Park)
Of the three oaks named for the brothers of the Slavic founding legend, Lech is the one nobody has dated.
It stands in open parkland beside Rogalin Palace, a branch of the National Museum in Poznan, with a trunk of 6.33 metres round. The museum's own encyclopedia and the Poznan tourist board both give that figure. Rus, ninety metres away, has been cored and dated by the Institute of Dendrology at Kornik. Lech has not, and no source we found puts a century on it, so several hundred years is as far as the evidence honestly goes. If anyone holds a ring count for this particular oak, tell us and we will put it on the page.
The third brother, Czech, was the thickest of them at 7.35 metres. It died in 1992 and the trunk still stands near the other two, so the short walk between the oaks takes in two giants and the remains of a third.
Lech, Czech and Rus are the brothers who in the legend founded Poland, Bohemia and the Rus. That is a heavy set of names to hang on three trees in a river meadow, and these ones have carried it long enough that the whole park is known by them.
The parkland is free and walkable. It lies about twenty kilometres south of Poznan with no stop of its own; the cycle path along the Warta is the good way in.
Pedunculate Oak (Quercus robur) · 800 years · Rogalin, Greater Poland Voivodeship (Rogalin Landscape Park)
In 2019 the Institute of Dendrology at Kornik put a core into this trunk and came back with a number: 800 to 850 years, which makes it the oldest oak anybody has dated in Poland.
It is the thickest of the Rogalin oaks as well, 9.15 metres round, a figure carried both by the palace museum's own encyclopedia and by the Poznan tourist board. At nine metres a trunk stops reading as a trunk and starts reading as a piece of the ground standing up.
The dating was not the only thing done to it that year. The institute propagated the tree in vitro and the clone, named Rusek, was planted near the palace gate: the same oak genetically, a sapling physically, starting over a short walk from itself. Do not mistake the young one for this one.
Eight centuries means it was already a full-grown tree when Poland was partitioned out of existence, and it was still here when the country came back. Its neighbour Lech, ninety metres away, has never been dated at all. Czech, the third of the oaks named for the legendary brothers, died in 1992 and its trunk still stands.
The parkland beside Rogalin Palace is free and open, about twenty kilometres south of Poznan. The two living oaks and the dead one sit within a few minutes of each other, so the walk is short and the time goes on standing under this one.