The Max-Eyth-See Oak

Stuttgart's protection ordinance obliges the city to have this oak examined once a year for its health and safety. That is a level of attention most trees never get, and it comes with the natural monument status the pedunculate oak was given in June 2003, for its character and for its value as habitat. It stands on the shore of the Max-Eyth-See, which is not a natural lake at all. The water sits in a gravel quarry that was worked out and then flooded in 1935, put under landscape protection in 1961, and has been Stuttgart's biggest outdoor escape ever since. On a warm weekend up to 15,000 people come out here, and the paths run the whole way round the water. So this oak has spent its recent decades as a piece of public furniture, which is a harder life than a forest. It has watched a working pit turn into a lake, then into a protected landscape, then into a place where a good part of the city spends its Sundays. What no source will tell us is how old it is. Nobody has recorded an age or a girth, so we do not know whether it stood here before the quarry filled with water or arrived with the park. A photograph taken in May 2022 puts it firmly alive and standing. If you know its age, tell us.