The Strassergasse Oak

This oak's crown spreads about 20 metres, roughly as wide as the tree is tall. The city's tree inventory puts the crown in the 19 to 21 metre class and the height at 16 to 20 metres, on a trunk 2.90 metres round. That is an unusually broad spread for a trunk of that size, and the oak has the room to show it: it is the only tree within about 15 metres, standing beside the road at Strassergasse 2 in Grinzing. Vienna made it Natural Monument 671 on 2 May 1979 and wrote down three reasons: its size, the form of its crown, and its standing as a historic remnant of the Grinzing village scene. A city does not often protect a tree for the street it belongs to as much as for the tree itself. This one got both. Walk 80 to 100 metres north up the same street and you reach three more protected trees at Strassergasse 8 to 12, a yew, a giant sequoia and a Nordmann fir, all listed in 1941. A broadleaf oak and a Californian conifer within a short stroll of each other make an odd and pleasing pair. Nobody has dated the oak. The newest dated photographs we know of were taken in July 2012, and the city's inventory still carries it. If you pass, tell us how it looks, and if you know when it was planted, tell us that too.