Vainiai Poplar

The manor is gone and its park has gone back to scrub, and the poplar is still standing in the middle of it: 6.85 metres around at chest height, 35.5 metres tall, among the largest white poplars recorded in Lithuania. Poplars grow fast and are rarely left alone long enough to reach anything like this size, which is most of the reason this one is protected. It was declared a nature monument in 1960 and reconfirmed as a state-protected natural landscape object in 1999. Nobody has put an age on it, and we are not going to derive one. White poplar growth rates vary too widely for a trunk measurement to be read backwards into years with any honesty. If a record exists somewhere in the Jonava district archives, or somebody has counted rings, tell us and the number goes on the page. What is left of Vainiai manor park is the sort of place that only survives because nobody got round to clearing it. A footpath leads in from the road to the tree, so the way is obvious once you are there, though getting there means a car: this is open country north of the KK224, a little over a kilometre from the nearest village, in the part of Lithuania where an old estate leaves a poplar behind and not much else.