The Pear of the Wolski Family

Everything else that stood on this square is gone. The Wolski family's farmhouse garden was here, and beneath it, through the German occupation, an underground shelter known as Bunkier Krysia, where roughly forty people of Jewish origin were hidden. It was discovered in March 1944, and the family and everyone sheltering with them were murdered. The local Ochota press describes this pear as the only living witness left on the site, the oldest tree in the area, already growing during the war. That sentence is also the only age anybody has given it. No planting date survives, so the floor is about 85 years and nobody has set a ceiling. Warsaw's city council made it a natural monument on 4 August 2024 and recorded it then as in good condition with no visible damage, a fresher check on a tree's health than most pages on this site can offer. The same year it was Ochota's finalist in the city's public Tree of the Year vote. Two things about it are unsettled, and neither has been resolved. The council designation gives a girth of 285 centimetres and calls it a common pear, Pyrus communis. The city's green-space authority, running that same Tree of the Year vote, gives 293 centimetres and calls it a wild pear, Pyrus pyraster. One puts its height at roughly six metres, the other at nine.