HIGHEST oak in Europe - Rairiz de Veiga, OU, Galicia, España - Superlatives on Waymarking.com

"The municipality of Rairiz de Veiga not only has one of the most popular festivals of the Ourense summer (the pilgrimage of A Saínza), numerous churches of monumental interest or the popular specialized Fair of A Pereira. It is also the municipality in which one of the oldest trees in Galicia is located. But few people know of the existence of what has been recognized by many as "the tallest oak in Europe", with a height that exceeds 35 meters. It is the Carballa de A Saínza, located just 200 meters from the small municipality of Santa Baia and surrounded by other species of less longevity.

A century-old tree, experts cannot say with absolute certainty how many years have passed since it was built, as there is no written documentation to corroborate this, only oral transmission from generation to generation, in which everyone remembers the tree as it is today.

The width of the trunk, the size or the number of lines that have formed around its stem are some of the elements that are taken into account to calculate about 500 years of existence, especially when compared to the specimens that surround it.

Half a millennium of life of a tree that has witnessed numerous historical events. Many place the birth of this oak in parallel with the advances that Galicia achieved in agriculture and that allowed it to gain a place in the European market. For this reason, it witnessed how the cultivation of potatoes from America was established in nearby lands at the end of the 18th century, which ended the hunger of the peasants, turning the area of ??A Limia into a profuse enclave for the cultivation of tubers.

It also witnessed a fundamental event for the city of Ourense, the inauguration in 1881 of the railway line that would link Ourense with the port of Vigo.

A series of historical milestones that would culminate in 2007, when it became the sixth natural monument in Galicia and was included in the catalogue of "single trees" of Galicia. There is a whole series of rituals around this Carballa, "which many people approach to hug it, touch it or even go to collect its seeds to have trees with the same vigor as this one in their homes," explains Delfín Caseiro, author of the book A romaría da Saínza: Mouros e cristiáns.

Another of the tree's particularities is its resistance, as it does not show deterioration or any signs of having any of the diseases that usually affect these species. "Normally they lose mass or wood," says Caseiro. There are even those who say that its roots are so deep that they reach the same size as the crown, in addition to exceptional climatic characteristics. Hopefully in 500 years Carballa da Rocha will continue to bear witness to history."

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Type of documentation of superlative status: web Location of coordinates: place of tree Web Site: [Web Link]

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