The Dvarcionys Oak

Dvarcionys is the part of Vilnius people go to for the lake, not the history, a spot on the eastern edge of the city known for its beach, its forest paths and a natural spring the city also lists as its own protected object a short walk from here. This oak is the other kind of protected thing in the same neighbourhood: not water, wood. Vilnius's registry names it plainly, the Dvarcionys Oak, and gives it no further description, no measurement, no story attached. An independent natural-heritage catalogue lists it too, under the same municipality, confirming it as a real, standing, designated tree rather than a paperwork ghost, but adds nothing past that. Even the species stops at genus: this is an oak, pedunculate or sessile nobody has recorded which. That is the whole file on it, which is unusual for a tree old enough to be listed alongside a spring that has presumably been running since before anyone thought to protect either. If you know this corner of Antakalnis and have stood under it, its species, its girth and roughly how old it looks would each answer something the register never bothered to ask.