The Turkey Oak of Dolina Percedol

Trieste used to go skating here. The pond at the bottom of the Percedol dolina, a sinkhole in the limestone of the plateau above the city, lies deep enough in its own shade to hold ice through the winter, and in the 1800s and early 1900s that made it the city's rink. Turkey oaks ring the hollow. This is the one the state wrote down. Thirty-five metres is a great deal of Quercus cerris. Three separate readings exist, from the national monumental register, the regional decree and an independent field visit in October 2021, and all three came back with the same two numbers: 3.10 metres round the trunk, 35 metres tall. That degree of agreement is rare in this work, and it describes a tall, straight tree rather than a broad one. Nobody has dated it. Neither register carries an age for this oak, and no growth-rate estimate has been made from the girth, so the honest answer is that we do not know. If you know of a survey that dates the oaks of Percedol, tell us. The setting carries the walk on its own. A dolina is a hollow where limestone has dissolved away beneath, and this is one of the best known on the Trieste Carso, with a marked path around its rim, a protected pond at the bottom and, in the shade below, what local sources call the finest Turkey oaks on the plateau.