THE CROOKED FOREST

We all love to take a quiet work in the woods, go hiking or camping, but how would you feel walking into a forest and all you see are crooked trees. You will be scared, at least a little bit. Meet the crooked forest of Poland. Let’s take a closer look at this forest. .

The crooked forest is a grove of 400 pines in the Polish village of Nowe Czarnowo. The trees were planted in 1930. This 1.8 heactare forest, though, is unlike any other forest, all the trees in this forest are sharply bent at the base. The trees grow from the base with a 90° sharp bend and then curve back to grow up straight. The trees are healthy despite their curves and they grow to be up to 50ft tall.

Another surprising fact is that almost all of the trees point northwards. Also, this forest of crooked trees is surrounded by straight pine trees. The crooked forest of Poland has surely attracted curious visitors. All who visit this forest are left pondering over the question ; “Why are the trees bent? “.

There are many theories as to why the trees are bent. One of such theories is that pines of varying length were planted in the 1930s an then flattened by German tanks when they were young. However, the curvature of the trunks are too smooth for such heavy destruction and the tanks would have wiped out the entire grove and not just the young pines. Other theories suggests that a heavy snowstorm, gravitational pulls or genetic mutations could have caused this unusual curvature.

Another popular theory is that the pines were deliberately bent by the local farmers so as to produce naturally curved wood for ship building and furniture making.

Sadly, the only people who could have explain to us why and how these trees were bent are no where to be found. The Gryfino was mostly abandoned in the early stages of the war. More people continued to leave until the 1970s. Today, this mysterious natural bizzare continues to amaze us. Who knows, maybe one day, the mystery behind this forest will be unraveled.