The Oak of Schönbrunn's Botanical Garden

In September 1941 three trees in one corner of Schönbrunn's botanical garden were put under protection. A survey of Vienna's natural monuments printed in 1949 went back through the list and marked one of them destroyed by war events, a Japanese pagoda tree that stood about thirty metres from here. This oak is one of the two that came through. The yew twelve metres away is the other. No source will give it an age. The register recorded none in 1941 and has recorded none since, so what there is to go on is the trunk: 6.21 metres around, measured a metre off the ground. A tree that thick has been growing for centuries, but girth alone will not say how many and nobody has counted, so any single figure you see for this oak is somebody's estimate. The ground explains the tree. This was the Habsburgs' own botanical garden, begun in the 1750s and stocked from imperial collecting expeditions, and Schönbrunn is federal property rather than municipal, which is why Vienna's city tree inventory has no record of this oak at all. The pedunculate oak was there as the native, the plainest thing in a garden full of imports. Come in through the Hietzinger Tor. The botanical garden is free and open daily; the Palm House and the Gloriette a short walk away are separate tickets and a different afternoon.