The “Old Man of the Carpathians” is 900 years old in the papers and about 560 by radiocarbon dating. The oldest dated oak in Romania stands 190 kilometres to the north.

The centuries-old tree nearest to you

Press the button and the page looks up, on your phone or laptop, the nearest trees above the legal girth threshold for their species. Your position never leaves your device. If you would rather not share it, pick a county. The map filters apply here too.

Distances are straight-line. Trees on pastures and in forests have no address; take the coordinates with you.

The oldest trees in Romania: what is known about their age

Nine trees you will find in guidebooks and school textbooks. Four of them have a radiocarbon date from Adrian Pătruț's team at Babeș-Bolyai University; for the others the age is an estimate, and we say where it comes from. The Ineu yew is absent from the Arbori Remarcabili database and is added separately from local and institutional sources. The old chestnuts of Baia Mare, often mentioned alongside them, are a 500-hectare reserve of sweet chestnut on the slopes of the Igniș Mountains rather than a single tree, which is why they have no dot on the map.

The Cajvana oak

Cajvana, Suceava county · Arbori Remarcabili

Girth	11.11 m (2015)
Age	around 810 years radiocarbon dating
Species	pedunculate oak (Quercus robur)
Getting there	In town, in a public spot, fenced; Cajvana is about 30 kilometres west of Suceava, on county road DJ 178D.

The oldest dated oak in Romania and one of the thickest in Europe. The town's legend ties it to Stephen the Great, said to have halted under it in 1476; an older legend says it was planted over the mass grave of the men killed in the Tatar invasion of 1241. Radiocarbon dating published in 2011 found a calibrated age of about 735 years for the oldest wood sample from the hollow; allowing for the wood lost to the centre of the trunk, the tree would be roughly 810 years old and would have sprouted around the year 1200. The trunk is hollow, with dead branches and a fence around it.

• Pătruț et al., „AMS radiocarbon dating of the very large pedunculate oak of Cajvana”, Studia UBB Chemia 56(1), 2011
• Fișa arborelui pe Arbori Remarcabili (nr. 90)
• Cajvana, Wikipedia în română

Horea's oak

Țebea, Baia de Criș commune, Hunedoara county · Arbori Remarcabili

Girth	around 9 m; the trunk has been cemented since 1947
Age	around 800 years at its death, in 2005 radiocarbon dating
Species	pedunculate oak (Quercus robur), although it is called a sessile oak
Getting there	In the Heroes' Cemetery (the Pantheon of the Moți) at Țebea, on national road DN76 between Brad and Vața de Jos; open access at any time.

Under this tree, in 1784, Horea called the Moți to revolt; Avram Iancu's grave is 15 metres away. It is a listed historic monument. Its decline began in the 1890s, when bricks for the new church were stored beside its roots; in 1924 it was bound with steel hoops, and in 1947 the trunk was almost entirely encased in cement, sculpted to imitate bark. It died in a storm in 2005, and the cemented trunk still stands. The oldest radiocarbon-dated wood sample has a calibrated age of about 580 years; allowing for the wood lost from the centre of the trunk, the tree would have been around 800 years old.

• Pătruț et al., „Old ages of two historical Romanian trees assessed by AMS radiocarbon dating”, Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research B, 2013
• Gorunul lui Horea, Wikipedia în română
• Fișa arborelui pe Arbori Remarcabili (nr. 4699)

Eminescu's lime

Copou Park, Iași

Girth	around 4 m at the level of the supports; split, propped trunk
Age	around 540 years (estimate from wood cores, 2013) or 458 years (tables of the Iași environmental protection agency) estimate
Species	silver lime (Tilia tomentosa)
Getting there	In Copou Park, beside the poet's bust and the Mihai Eminescu Museum; open access.

The best-known monument tree in Romania, in whose shade the poet is said to have written in the 1870s. A storm split it in 1953; it has stood on metal supports since, was treated in 1990 and 2014, and survives through a rare phenomenon: adventitious roots grown through the rotted trunk down into the ground. Its age has not been radiocarbon-dated. A 2013 assessment by the biologist Ionel Lupu, on two wood cores, estimated 540 years (± 3%); the Iași environmental agency's tables give 458. It has been on the county's list of protected trees since 1994.

• Teiul lui Eminescu, Wikipedia în română
• Mediafax, „Teiul lui Eminescu din Iași, punct major de atracție turistică”, 2018

Avram Iancu's oak

Avram Iancu Park, Blaj, Alba county

Girth	6.40 m
Age	“over 600 years” in local tradition; from its girth, 250–500 years estimate
Species	pedunculate oak (Quercus robur)
Getting there	In Avram Iancu Park in the centre of Blaj, the former garden of the Metropolitan Castle; open access.

In the former garden of the Metropolitan Castle at Blaj. The name dates from after 1849: Avram Iancu and Bishop Alexandru Sterca-Șuluțiu are said to have talked for days in its shade. According to local tradition the oak is over 600 years old and was already standing when the Treaty of Blaj was concluded in 1687; at 6.40 metres in girth, the growth rate used on this page gives it between 250 and 500 years, but the age has not been confirmed by dating. It is a natural monument.

• Stejarul lui Avram Iancu din Blaj, Wikipedia în română

Cuza's oak

Vorona forest, Botoșani county

Girth	no public measurement
Age	“over 500 years”, local estimate estimate
Species	oak
Getting there	By forest road, from the Botoșani–Vorona county road or from the “monasteries' road” between Vorona Monastery and the Vorona Hermitage.

In a clearing less than 2 kilometres from Vorona Monastery, with a legend about Prince Alexandru Ioan Cuza, said to have rested under it. Declared a natural monument, with an information board and a rest area, on a themed trail of the Botoșani forest directorate. The age of “over 500 years” is a local estimate; there is no published dating.

• Stejarul lui Cuza din Vorona, Wikipedia în română

The Fat Tree (Pomul gros)

Pomiculturii Street, Timișoara

Girth	4.47 m
Age	around 345 years, if it was planted in 1681, as is assumed estimate
Species	plane tree
Getting there	On Pomiculturii Street; open access, from the street.

Regarded as Timișoara's oldest tree, it stands on a neighbourhood street, with a yellow fence around it. It is said to have been planted around 1681, when the city was under Ottoman rule; the lamp-oil cart used to stop beside it, and there was a well. It is 21 metres tall and 4.47 metres in girth. In 2011 it reached the final of Romania's “Tree of the Year” contest.

• Pomul gros, Wikipedia în română

How old a tree really is

Old trunks are hollow, so the innermost rings, the oldest, rotted away long ago and cannot be counted. Three routes remain. The first is legend: “Stephen the Great rested under it”, so it is 550 years old. The second is a rule of thumb: a young oak adds roughly two and a half centimetres of girth a year, less and less as it ages, so a nine-metre trunk “would be” 400 or 700 years old, depending on the rate you pick. The third is the laboratory: pieces of wood are taken from the deepest point of the hollow, the carbon-14 left in them is measured to date the wood in the samples, and the age of the wood that has rotted away at the centre of the trunk is then estimated.

The third route has been applied to four Romanian oaks and gave results that contradict the first two. The Mercheașa oak, 10.16 metres around, is around 560 years old: it grew fast, on an open pasture, with water and light. The Cajvana oak, at 11.11 metres, is around 810. The Țebea oak, under which Horea called the Moți to revolt in 1784, was around 800 when it died in 2005. The Botoșana oak, in the garden of a house 3 kilometres from Cajvana, has an estimated age of 645 years, give or take 50. A thick trunk points to a tree that has lived well rather than one that has lived long.

That is why the “indicative age” filter on this page is cautious and wide. For every tree we compute a range from its girth and the growth rate of its species, and the filter uses the low end of that range. “Probably over 300 years” means that even growing fast, in good conditions, the tree would still need three centuries to reach the girth measured. For the four dated oaks we use the radiocarbon estimate.

What a remarkable tree is, in law

Since April 2023 Romania has Law no. 97/2023 on the protection of remarkable trees. A tree outside the national forest estate, towns and villages included, is protected if it meets one of three conditions: it reaches the minimum girth for its species in the law's annex, measured 1.30 metres above ground on the uphill side; it is at least 160 years old, established from documents and measurements at registration; or it is tied to an event, a personality or a local legend. The law does not apply to private properties inside built-up areas. Felling a protected tree is allowed only if it is completely dead, uprooted by nature or dangerous with no other remedy, after an assessment and with the Forest Guard's approval. The law requires a public Catalogue of Remarkable Trees kept by the national agency for protected areas; the implementing rules appeared only in June 2026.

On this map, 3,743 of the 5,703 trees have a girth above the annex threshold for their species. The threshold is only a size condition; trees inside forests and on private properties in built-up areas stay outside the law. According to Europa Liberă, the amendment that would have included forest trees was withdrawn in 2022, after the Government's negative opinion.

Method and limits

The dots come from the public database of the Arbori Remarcabili platform, started in 2015 by Tibor Hartel, Viorel Arghiuș and Réka Tamás with the Agri-Cultura-Natura Transylvaniae Association; the first tree was measured at the launch by Prince Charles, now King Charles III. We used the data available on 14 September 2026: 5,703 trees with coordinates and girth. For the 2,364 trees with a trunk girth of at least 4.5 metres we also read the individual record, which is where the “where it stands” column comes from; for the others the setting is left unspecified. Every row links to the original record, with photographs, on arboriremarcabili.ro, and any missing tree can be added there.

County and administrative locality were assigned from the coordinates, using the administrative boundaries from geo-spatial.org (2025 edition). The place name typed by the volunteer is shown separately, as recorded. Girths are those reported by volunteers, with a tape, at 1.30 metres; for multi-stemmed or leaning trunks the measurement can differ from one person to another. The indicative age range comes from dividing the girth by two values of annual growth, taken as averages over the tree's whole life: 1.3–2.5 cm for oak, beech, lime, ash and other hardwoods; 2.5–5 cm for poplar, willow, plane and other fast-growing species; 0.9–1.8 cm for hornbeam, pear, apple, yew and other slow-growing species; 1.1–2.2 cm for conifers. The rates follow the order of magnitude in the British Forestry Commission's guidance on veteran trees (White, 1998) and the reference tables of the Arbori Remarcabili platform; they are indicative, as the four dated oaks show.

Legal thresholds are those in the annex to Law no. 97/2023, by species; for species the law does not name we used the 300 cm threshold for exotic trees. The law applies only outside the forest estate and does not cover private properties in built-up areas, so a tree “above the threshold” in a forest or in a yard is not necessarily protected by it. Positions are as recorded by volunteers and can be a few tens of metres from the trunk. Trees on private land are visited only with the owner's consent.

Sources

• Arbori Remarcabili din România — harta și baza de date a arborilor bătrâni (instantaneu din 14 septembrie 2026)
• Arbori Remarcabili — instrucțiuni de măsurare și reperele de mărime pe specii
• Legea nr. 97/2023 privind protecția arborilor remarcabili, Monitorul Oficial nr. 320 din 18 aprilie 2023
• Ministerul Mediului — „Arborii remarcabili ai României vor fi protejați printr-un catalog național public”, 21 mai 2026
• Normele metodologice de aplicare a Legii nr. 97/2023, Monitorul Oficial nr. 476 din 8 iunie 2026
• Europa Liberă — „Povestea fascinantă a arborilor remarcabili din România, promovați de Regele Charles. De ce legea care îi apără nu a mers până la capăt”, 1 iunie 2023
• Pătruț, A. et al. — AMS radiocarbon dating of the very large pedunculate oak of Cajvana, Studia UBB Chemia 56(1), 2011
• Pătruț, A. et al. — Old ages of two historical Romanian trees assessed by AMS radiocarbon dating, Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research B 294, 2013
• Pătruț, A. et al. — Radiocarbon investigation of the pedunculate oak of Botoșana, Romania, Studia UBB Chemia 63(4), 2018
• Pătruț, A. et al. — AMS radiocarbon dating of the large pedunculate oak of Mercheașa, Romania, Studia UBB Chemia 66(3), 2021
• White, J. — Estimating the age of large and veteran trees in Britain, Forestry Commission Information Note 12, 1998
• geo-spatial.org / ANCPI — limitele unităților administrativ-teritoriale (ro_admin_lau_polygon, 2025), CC BY-SA 4.0
• Centrul Național de Informare și Promovare Turistică Arad — Parcul dendrologic din Ineu
• Agricultura, nr. 35, 1973 — mențiunea tisei din parcul orașului Ineu
• Aurel Dragoș, Arealul Ineu — repere istorice, 2021
• Ghid turistic al județului Arad — denumirea locală «arborele lui Mihai Viteazul»