The Visbarai Pine

Almost every protected veteran in this corner of Lithuania is an oak. This one is a pine. The Visbarai pine stands beside road 4514 in the Tauragė district, on the run between Žygaičiai and Bikavėnai near the village of Stokaičiai, and the district put it under protection in 1988, while the country was still Soviet. Its trunk is 2.85 metres round and it carries 18.7 metres of height, both figures taken in 2010. Those are ordinary numbers on an oak and large ones on a Scots pine. The species grows tall and narrow, is normally cut for timber long before it thickens, and reaches this sort of girth only where it has been left alone in the open for a very long time. Lithuania is full of Scots pine. Very little of it is allowed to end up looking like this. What is not recorded is most of the rest. A single Lithuanian record carries the measurements, the designation number and the protection date, and nothing independent repeats them. Nobody has published an age for the tree, so there is no figure here to trust or to doubt. If you know when this pine went in, or you have put a tape around it more recently than 2010, tell us.