Black Oak Open-Air Museum in Roszków

The trunk lying by the embankments of the Buków polder began life as a pedunculate oak around the 11th century. After roughly 350 years a flood brought it down, and the wood lay under water and silt for centuries before it was dug out and put on display. The Black Oak Open-Air Museum in Roszków is a single small exhibit, but it tells the story of the river that has shaped this corner of the Racibórz area for centuries.

Where black oak comes from

Trees on floodplains often stand in water, and oaks, willows and elms cope with this better than most. Only big floods topple the trunks and bury them in mud. Cut off from air, the wood does not rot but slowly darkens over the centuries – this is black oak (bog oak), a rare and valuable material for cabinet makers. The Krzyżanowice municipality describes the exhibit as a trunk that returned to the surface about 600 years after the flood.

The municipality actually has two sites devoted to black oak: the other one, with two trunks and a display case showing a cross-section of the wood, is in the centre of Krzyżanowice on Główna Street. The Roszków exhibit stands on Wiejska Street, next to the polder embankments.

The Buków polder: the backdrop

The Buków polder is a dry flood-control reservoir on the Oder covering about 830 ha with a capacity of around 53 million m³, built between 1989 and 2002. Most of the time it is meadows, scrub and oxbow lakes, but during high water it fills up and protects towns downstream, including Racibórz and Kędzierzyn-Koźle. From the embankments you can see how wide the Oder valley is and why black oaks turn up here.

Nearby lies Roszków Bobrowy, a former gravel pit of about 50 ha created by sand and gravel extraction in the 1980s. Local anglers say it is up to 12 m deep and has two islands; a flood embankment separates it from the village.

Tripto tip

This is a short stop of 10–15 minutes, best as part of a bike or car trip through the Oder valley. The exhibit is outdoors, with no ticket office or staff. After snowmelt or heavy rain, the dirt tracks along the embankments can be muddy, and during high water the polder area may be off-limits. To round off the day, drive to Krzyżanowice to compare the two trunks, or to Chałupki, where a viewing tower overlooks the Oder meanders.