Thousand-year-old oak – now with new leaves

The thousand-year-old Kvillek outside Vimmerby lives on. Ahead of the summer season, the ancient old tree has new leaves, reports SVT Nyheter Småland.

– The oak has recently shed its leaves on the branch that is still alive, says Jerry Svensson at the county administrative board in Kalmar to SVT.

The oak tree is both the country’s largest – and probably also one of Europe’s oldest still living oaks. Even if the old tree eventually dies, it will continue to be a foundation for biodiversity.

The Kvillek grows in the nature reserve Kvill and with its circumference of 13 meters is Sweden’s thickest tree. At the end of the 1930s, an investigation into the oak’s age was carried out, which concluded that it was then approximately 950 years old, which means that it is now probably the country’s only thousand-year-old oak.

The oak is now completely hollow and is held together by a metal band.