The Old Wild Apple Tree of Žiar
By most accounts, nobody planted the second-best tree in Europe. The wild apple on the hill called Diel, above Žiar, may have grown from a seed a bird dropped, or from an apple core somebody threw away at the edge of a field. In 2026 it finished second in European Tree of the Year with 4,766 points, behind Lithuania's Oak of Laukiai and ahead of Poland's Crooked Tree. That is Slovakia's best result in the contest; the previous best was third place, in 2016. It qualified by winning Slovakia's own Tree of the Year for 2025, with 4,345 of more than 18,000 votes. It is not big. The trunk is 242 cm round and the tree is about eight metres tall, a wild apple in a contest dominated by oaks, limes and beeches. It stands alone at the far edge of a field that villagers worked by hand for generations, on a windswept shoulder of the Western Tatras foothills at 860 metres. For about 150 years it has taken the mountain wind, frost and drought with no orchard care and no protection. What it has instead is people. One resident told Pravda that their grandfather remembered the tree from his childhood, and that today they walk up to it themselves. It stands on open farmland rather than in a park, and no gate or fee is recorded; keep to the field edge. It is about 15 km from Veľké Borové's pine, a drive and then a walk uphill.
On the hill known as Diel, above the village of Žiar, Liptovský Mikuláš District, Žilina Region, Slovakia You can recognise it by its solitude: a wild apple about eight metres tall, with a trunk 242 cm round, alone at the far edge of a field. It stands on the Diel hillside above Žiar, at 860 metres.
Open hillside farmland above Žiar village, at 860 m elevation, at the edge of a field on the hill called Diel. No source records a gate, fee or restriction, and a marked cycling route in the area passes close by, but this is working agricultural land rather than a park: reach it on foot or by bike along the farm track up the hillside and stay to the field edge.
No public transport to the tree itself. Car or bike to Žiar village (on the L. Mikuláš side of the Western Tatras, near the popular Žiarska dolina trailhead), then on foot or by bike up the hillside track to Diel, roughly 15 km / 20-25 minutes' drive from Veľké Borové plus the walk up.