Crooked Forest

In a plantation of ordinary Scots pine outside Nowe Czarnowo stands a block of about four hundred trees that are not ordinary: each one leaves the ground, bends through roughly ninety degrees to the north, runs horizontally for one to three metres, and then turns up again and grows straight, so the whole grove has the same J-shaped kink at the same height. They were planted around 1930 and the deformation must have been imposed when they were young saplings. Beyond that, nothing is established. The explanations offered - deliberate shaping for curved furniture or boat timber, snow damage, a tank or machinery passing through, a growth hormone, ground movement - are all speculation, and the people who planted them left no record and were displaced after the war. It is a genuine unexplained thing rather than a manufactured mystery, and it is also a small grove that takes twenty minutes.

What you actually see

• Four hundred identical bends - each pine kinked ninety degrees to the north near the base.
• A 1930s planting - the shaping imposed when the trees were saplings.
• No accepted explanation - furniture, snow, machinery and hormones all unproven.
• A lost record - those who planted them left nothing and were displaced afterwards.

When to go

April to October. An hour.

Honest expectations

It is small - twenty minutes covers it, and it is a detour rather than a destination. The surrounding plantation is ordinary. There are no facilities. Confident explanations online are guesses.

Nearby

Gryfino is north; Szczecin is beyond it.