The Volkenrodaer Koenigseiche

Lightning did this oak an odd favour. A strike in 1989 broke off one of its main limbs, and the broken wood made it possible to date the tree properly for the first time. A core sample taken in 1992, read against nineteenth-century records of its girth, put the age at roughly 500 to 600 years. That is a serious oak and it is also about half of what the village had been calling it. Everyone here knows it as the Tausendjährige Eiche, the thousand-year oak, and the tree register that carries it says plainly that the thousand years are local exaggeration. The trunk needs no help from folklore. It measured 9.8 metres around on 30 June 2019, which puts it among the thickest oaks in Germany, under a crown reaching 23 metres. A check in September 2022 found it still in good health. It is thought to be a relic of wood pasture from the heyday of the Cistercian abbey at Volkenroda, whose grounds sit a short walk away. How far back the site is documented is unresolved: one account says the twelfth century, the register says the tenth, and neither has been checked against the original charter. The tree has been patched up twice, in 1955 and again in 1991. Both times the people doing the work left a note in a bottle inside the trunk.