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I'm interested in visiting a "Crooked forest", similar to this forest in Poland or the Hoia forest in Romania, which has trees bent at the bottom:

enter image description here

However, I'm not interested in these two locations in particular, just in this specific tree shape. Ideally, I'd like to find one near where I live (Rheinland / Alsace). Can anyone point me to similar locations nearby?

There seem to be different theories regarding how such forests appeared, including heavy wind / snow, WWII tanks, and trees being specially grown for particular woodwork. Does anyone know which one it is? It would certainly help me in finding one, e.g. if snow is responsible then it makes no sense to look for one in places where there's no snow.

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    Curious that your Poland link and your Romania link both contain exactly the same photograph... (just with different color balances).
    – hmakholm left over Monica
    Nov 15, 2018 at 14:34
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    I'm tentatively concluding that there is exactly one such forest in Europe, either in Poland or in Romania, and ant that some original error that attributes it to the other country has mysteriously been repeated on half of the "crooked forest" web pages and articles out there ...
    – hmakholm left over Monica
    Nov 15, 2018 at 14:40
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    Notably, the Wikipedia article about the Romanian forest does not mention crooked trees at all, whereas several google hits about the site in Poland give plausible-sounding details about when the trees were planted, how the area was German at the time, and so forth.
    – hmakholm left over Monica
    Nov 15, 2018 at 14:45
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    Perhaps the reference to Pomerania became confused with Romania, noting that the confusing articles are not authored in Romania, Poland (or Pomerania).
    – Giorgio
    Nov 15, 2018 at 17:42
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    There is an art installation in the UK with crooked trees, called Ash Dome by the artist David Nash.
    – Nick
    Nov 15, 2018 at 22:10

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The crooked forest in the photo is in North-West Poland, near the German border. It was almost certainly caused by human action. It is believed that the trees were planted in the early 1930s, and were shaped as such for a particular purpose - but the knowledge of that purpose was lost over time (I suspect, but can't find a reference to support, that the original owners were killed in the war)

I'm not aware of any other such forests, but you'll find individual crooked trees in almost any forest - these will be more likely to have been caused by natural means, for example another tree falling on them.

You may be more likely to find an area of coppicing near to you however - this is an ancient means of woodland management whereby the trees were cut right back to encourage the growth of long, thin trunks for woodworking purposes.

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  • The original owners might well have survived the war but been expelled when the territory was given to Poland after the Potsdam Conference.
    – hmakholm left over Monica
    Nov 16, 2018 at 13:12
  • @HenningMakholm Possible, but then I'm sure the story would have come to light at some point since then.
    – Nick C
    Nov 16, 2018 at 13:20

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