The Kadriorg Guardhouse Oak

Tallinn's oldest tree is probably not the one the city points at. The hollow lime beside Niguliste church holds that title by tradition; when Olev Abner, chief dendrologist at Tallinn Botanic Garden, ranked the city's oldest trees for Postimees in 2017, he put this oak above it at 390 years. That ranking is the only source naming this particular tree, so read the number as one expert's reading rather than a settled fact. Where it came from is not in dispute. It is a remnant of the Kadriorg oak grove, which was standing well before the park that now surrounds it: Peter I bought the small coastal manor and its oaks in 1714 and built Kadriorg Palace beside them. By Abner's figure the tree was already decades old when that sale went through. Kadriorg Park's own history of the grounds says oaks of more than three hundred years still grow in the grove today. It keeps odd company for something this old. The guardhouse it stands beside went up in 1828, was taken apart and rebuilt to its original appearance in 2006, and now holds the park's museum, library and information point. The oak watched that building arrive, leave and come back. The pin is the guardhouse rather than the trunk, so the grove around it is where to look. If a plaque there names the oak, we would like to hear about it.