Quercus robur is a long-lived oak species which supports high biodiversity in native and urban forests and contributes to environmental and economic benefits in cities. The oldest oak trees play a significant role in forest ecosystems since they provide relationships between a large number of organisms and specific conditions under the canopy. At the same time, the oldest trees are the most vulnerable and thus require special attention, particularly in urban areas where self-sustaining mechanisms in forest ecosystems are restricted. In this work we inspected the largest oaks in Feofania Park, a government designated park in Kiev. We sampled wood cores to determine the age and to obtain the age-to-diameter ratio. Among all sampled cores, the earliest annual ring is 220 years old. We have estimated the ring number of each partial core applying mean ring width pools. The age of studied trees is found to be between 156 and 270 years, while age-to-diameter ratio in the stand is 2.13 years per cm. The chronology statistics indicate that the series crossdating is of satisfactory quality and that master series contains discernible climatic signal. The obtained data also suggests that the largest hollow-stem oaks with no piths at the park are about 300 years old. The local historian and journalist assertion that the oldest among currently existing oaks in Feofania was planted by or at least at the time of Petro Mohyla sounds far-fetched. However, it seems to be plausible that the largest oak trees of the nearest Holosiivskyi Park grow since the first half of the 17^th century.

Keywords: dendrochronology, urban oak forest, Kyiv urban forest

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