The Oak of Nispen

This oak stands in three places at once: partly in the field, partly in the road verge and partly under the paving of Essenseweg. The national tree register records all three, and at its last visit, in March 2024, the inspector noted that the road did not seem to bother the base of the trunk. The Bomenstichting's Landelijk Register Monumentale Bomen bands its planting to the 1920s, which makes it roughly 96 to 106 years old. It is 3.05 metres round at chest height and 18 metres tall, and it stands on its own at the edge of the farmland. The register's file puts it in a larger landscape. Nispen, it says, is the oldest settlement for a long way around, and land consolidation, the Dutch ruilverkaveling, redrew the fields here drastically. The file does not say when, or what this tree saw of it. What it does record is a rough patch in August 2003: storm damage and dead wood in the crown, with advice to cut back the suckers and check the base of the trunk for damage. In 2024 the inspector found it in good condition, and the file describes a healthy tree with a fine crown. That register is the only source we have for this oak, so nobody has written down who planted it or why. If you know, tell us. It is free to see from the road at any hour, about 320 metres from the copper beech at Nispen's parish cemetery.