Dab Mieszko I (King Mieszko I's Oak)

Warsaw's oldest tree survived six centuries of Polish history only to be set on fire by a person, not a storm, in June 2019. The oak, named for Poland's first recorded ruler though it began growing roughly two and a half centuries after his death around 992, stands at the edge of Natolin Forest on the city's southern edge, one of the last fragments of the wild Mazovian woodland that once covered this ground before Warsaw existed at all. Most of its crown has died back over the decades; steel cables and supports now hold the one thick surviving branch upright, and a cavity in the trunk has been filled with brick and cement, an old-fashioned repair meant to keep vandals and rot out rather than to look convincing. The arson attack in 2019 might have finished a lesser tree; this one produced leaves again the following spring. Its exact age has shifted across different surveys and plaques over the decades, estimates ranging from roughly 600 to 640 years depending on which measurement is cited, and an older on-site plaque is now known to have understated it. Whatever the precise figure, it remains the region's oldest documented oak and the clearest living link this city has to the forest it was built on top of.