The Columnar Oaks of Łowicka

Pedunculate oak spreads. These two go straight up, narrow and tight as poplars, because they are Quercus robur 'Fastigiata', a naturally occurring upright form that gardeners have propagated since the nineteenth century for exactly this shape. Warsaw protected the pair on 2 July 2013 at one address on ul. Lowicka, and measured them separately rather than as a clump: this one 22 metres tall on a trunk 270 centimetres round, its companion taller at 25 metres and slimmer at 245. The university botanical garden has two of the same cultivar flanking an entrance about 1.7 kilometres north, and the effect is identical in both places. An oak that reads as a column instead of a canopy stops anyone who knows what an oak is supposed to look like. Nobody has dated these two. Fastigiate oaks went into European gardens and streets right through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, which is a period rather than a year, so no figure goes here. One useful detail comes from the photograph in the city's records: it was taken from the pavement of ul. Narbutta. You can see both trees from the street corner without entering the courtyard at Lowicka 52, which matters, because whether a visitor can walk up to the trunks themselves is the one thing about this pair we have not established.