Sosna Rzepicha

Poland's thickest Scots pine took the title from a tree ten kilometres up the road, and it never had to grow to do it. The measuring rules changed. Sosna Waligóra held the record under the older method; Rzepicha holds it under the current one, at 5.68 metres round. The figure makes more sense once you see the trunk, which is five stems fused into a single mass, carrying one wide, well-built crown 27 metres up. There are dead branches in it with scars where the wounds closed over, and it is otherwise rated in very good health. It has been a protected nature monument since 1996, in the Nowy Świat forestry district between Pomorsko and Górki Małe, about ten and a half kilometres from Sulechów. Reaching it is the hard part, and it is worth being plain about that. Waligóra has a marked trail and somewhere to leave the car. Rzepicha has neither. It stands at the edge of a thicket on the Oder floodplain, beside a pool, with marshy meadow in front of it, and the last stretch from Górki Małe or Pomorsko is off the path and through wet ground. Wear boots. Nobody has published an age for this pine, which for a tree of its size is unusual. If you know of a count or a dated record, tell us.