Veryn is a village in the Lviv region of western Ukraine, and its tree grows unfenced beside the village church. The Millennium Oak is reckoned at over a thousand years old, with a hollow big enough that people compare it to a small cave; a 1917 photograph shows soldiers of the Ukrainian Sich Riflemen posing beside it. In 2010 Ukraine's national contest named it the oldest tree in the Lviv region, and in 2024 it placed eighth in the European Tree of the Year.
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The Millennium Oak of Veryn
Pedunculate Oak (Quercus robur) · over 1,000 years · Veryn village
The hollow in this oak is big enough that people compare it to a small cave, and a village story from the Second World War says a sniper once hid inside it to cover the crossing of the Dniester.
The tree is reckoned at over a thousand years old, and in 2010 Ukraine's national Tree of Ukraine contest named it the oldest tree in the Lviv region. It is a pedunculate oak, 8.5 metres round and about eighteen metres tall, growing beside the Church of St Michael the Archangel in the village of Veryn.
It has been a place to stop for a long time. Tradition says Hetman Bohdan Khmelnytsky rested in its shade. What is more than tradition is a set of photographs from 1917 showing soldiers of the Ukrainian Sich Riflemen standing beside it, later printed as a postcard, so it was already worth posing beside more than a century ago.
The hollow is also its weakness. Rot inside the trunk is a documented, ongoing concern, and it is part of what age looks like on an oak this size. The tree is still alive. It has been a protected botanical monument since 1984, and in 2024 it placed eighth in European Tree of the Year with 8,886 votes.
There is no fence. An informal path has worn its way to the trunk, which tells you how many people have made the same walk.
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