Sosna Waligóra

This pine is fatter at chest height than it is at the ground, which is not how trees are meant to work. At 1.3 metres it measures 620 centimetres round. At the base it measures 527. The likeliest explanation is that Waligóra was never one tree: at least two grew together low down, fused into a single mass, and the whole thing divides at about two metres into eight bent limbs. That accident of biography makes it the second thickest pine in Poland. The thickest, Rzepicha, happens to stand in the same forest district. In a national competition in 2002, Waligóra was judged the thickest specimen anyone put forward. The age is the surprise in the other direction. It is only about 160 to 170 years old, young for a tree with a reputation, and its bulk comes from its shape rather than from time. The eight limbs are now held with steel cables and there is a low wooden fence around the base. It is easy to reach and hard to miss: 80 metres off national road 32, a kilometre and a half east of Sulechów, with a parking area at the roadside. An 18-stop educational trail called Do Waligóra has run 3.4 kilometres out to it since 1998, and the local green and black hiking routes pass the same way. Protected since December 1982, reconfirmed by the voivode in 2006, and stranger up close than any photograph makes it look.