The SGGW Oak

An oak stands on Aleja Niepodleglosci, on the edge of what was once the main campus of SGGW, the Warsaw University of Life Sciences. The school received this land in 1923, carved from the old Pola Mokotowskie exercise fields, and spent the interwar years raising pavilions, a library and student housing on the site. In 1956 Warsaw swapped that land for territory further south in Ursynow, and SGGW has been based there ever since; nothing agricultural remains in Mokotow except this avenue and its name. The oak was declared a protected natural monument in 1974, by which point the university it once fronted had already left the neighbourhood behind. No source beyond the city's own register of protected trees has produced an age or a girth for it, so both stay open questions, exactly the kind a passer-by with a tape measure could close in a minute. Aleja Niepodleglosci is a wide public avenue, walked and cycled every day, with no gate anywhere near the tree and nothing to buy a ticket for. It is easy to find and, once you know which side of the street to look on, impossible to miss.