Nagelboom van 's-Gravenvoeren

At least eighty nails are hammered into the dead side of this horse chestnut, and that is the whole point of it. A nagelboom is a nail tree: you rub a nail over whatever hurts, then drive it into the trunk, and the ailment is supposed to travel into the wood along with it. The nails go into the back of the tree, where part of the trunk has already died, which is the part that takes them. It stands where two hollow roads cross at the Heuvelke, about 350 metres southwest of the Sint-Lambertuskerk in 's-Gravenvoeren. The crossing is thought to follow the line of the Via Mansuerisca, a Roman road, which is a reading of the landscape rather than a settled fact. Its condition is not good and both the Dutch record and the Flemish heritage inventory say so plainly. A successor has already been planted nearby against the day it goes. It was also a finalist for European Tree of the Year, which is a strange pair of things to be at the same time, and it is still standing. Nobody has recorded its age or its girth. The nails are the only count anybody has taken of it, and they were put there one ailment at a time.