Bartek Oak

Bartek is a pedunculate oak standing in Zagnansk north of Kielce, with a trunk of about thirteen and a half metres in girth and a height of around thirty, and it has been a national monument for a long time - protected since 1934, credited in tradition with a thousand years and with legends attaching Casimir the Great and Jan Sobieski to it. The age is the interesting correction: dendrochronological work in the 2000s put it at something in the range of six hundred and fifty to seven hundred years, which still makes it one of the oldest oaks in Poland but is not the millennium of the guidebooks and the signs. The tree has been through a great deal - lightning, a fire in a hollow, storm damage - and is held up with steel props and cables, its branches supported and its cavities treated, which is visible and is why it is still standing. An acorn-grown descendant, Bartek Junior, grows nearby.

What you actually see

• A thirteen-metre girth - a pedunculate oak of about thirty metres in height.
• A corrected age - dated to roughly 650 to 700 years, not the traditional thousand.
• Visible life support - steel props, cables and treated cavities holding it up.
• A descendant alongside - a younger oak grown from its acorns.

When to go

April to October; leaf cover from May. An hour.

Honest expectations

The thousand-year age is still on signs and in guidebooks and is not supported by the dating. The props and cables are prominent in every photograph. It is one tree - the visit is short. Parking is on the roadside.

Nearby

Kielce and Kadzielnia are south; the Swietokrzyskie mountains are east.