“A few minutes ago every tree was excited, bowing to the roaring storm, waving, swirling, tossing their branches in glorious enthusiasm, like worship. But though to the outer ear these trees are now silent, their songs never cease.”

— John Muir

They evoke feelings of peacefulness and contemplation, they feed the ground and nurture the soul, they’re part of the earth, and are made from earth. Trees represent life, and they sustain life, and so “Tree of the Year” is no idle label. This year’s winner, dubbed “The Guardian of the Flooded Village,” has stood for 350 years on a rocky bluff overlooking the inundated Czech village of Chudobin, where locals in the area insist it stands to this day as a sentinel, warding off evil spirits, a symbol of both resilience and resistance.

The Guardian of the Flooded Village won by public acclimation over a shortlist that included another guardian tree, this one in Romania, witch trees in the Netherlands and Ireland, and a contemplative old oak in Liverpool’s Calderstone Park. Nearly 300,00 votes were cast overall.

The Guardian of the Flooded Village is a Scots pine, pinus sylvestris, in the Czech Republic’s Vysočina Region.

It’s rooted to a rocky headland created by the Vir dam, and has managed to cling to life ever since.

According to local legend — the rural Czech equivalent, perhaps, of urban legend — a devil sat under the tree at night, playing a mournful tune on a violin. Scientists — those killjoys — say the sound was more likely strong winds blowing through the valley, though since construction of the dam, there hasn’t been much left of the valley for the wind to blow through.

Medieval superstition and the supernatural play a featured role in how many of this year’s finalists have been perceived over time. A Dutch beech, fagus sylvatica, aka “The Witch Tree,” in Bladel, North Brabant in the Netherlands, was a runner-up in the final vote; its sinister branches and roots that appear unable to grow into the ground are said to be the final resting place of “Black Kate,” a widely feared female bandit who led an infamous gang of robbers and smugglers in medieval times.

“Witch Tree” ©SBNL Natuurfonds-Rob Visser

Black Kate was said to have witch-like powers, which would not have endeared her to clerics in the Dutch Reformed Church, founded in 1571 at the outset of the Protestant Reformation. Black Kate’s legend lives on to this day, embodied in the form of this twisty, gnarly shaped tree.

The Allerton Oak in Liverpool’s park was named England’s tree of the year just this past autumn; it placed seventh in the continental competition. The Allerton Oak once marked a place of jurisprudence:,Judges would meet in medieval times to hold trials, in the shade of the old oak, instead of a more traditional courthouse.

A large crack in the tree is said to date from the 1864 when a ship packed to the rafters with gunpowder exploded in the nearby Mersey River. Sound from the explosion carried some 30 miles, and countless windows were shattered. Christmas cards with leaves from the Allerton oak were sent to soldiers from Liverpool during the Great War, to remind them of home.

Each tree keeps its own history, of course; it’s just that some histories are more illustrious than others. The original tree of life casts its shadow far and wide.

These are febrile, and fragile, times, of course, and so this year’s ceremony was marked via teleconferenced video, instead of the traditional ceremony in Brussels, thanks to the COVID19 coronavirus outbreak. The competition, sponsored in part by the Environmental Partnership Foundation, is intended to recognize and celebrate the emotional connection people feel with trees, while at the same time drawing attention to the threats posed to trees from man-made actions such as the destruction of ancient, old-growth forests, the looming effects of the climate crisis — and the construction of hydroelectric dams that wash away entire woodlands.

Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow, Abraham Lincoln once said. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.