Sacred Trees of Šumadija — Uncovering Hidden Gems of Serbia’s Botanical and Cultural Legacy

The word ’forest’ is in the roots of the name of the Šumadija region, although its forests are degraded. Thanks to the local population, especially in rural areas, some of the oldest trees have been preserved until today as sacred trees ’zapisi’. Sacred trees are usually oaks, sometimes representing the monumental and oldest specimen of their respective species. For centuries, the local population gathered around these sacred trees, practising various folk customs.
The multidisciplinary TreeGems team has joined forces with citizens of the Šumadija district to work on documenting the sacred trees of this region in 2025 and 2026. The goal of the project is the characterisation of sacred trees from a botanical and ecological point of view, with special emphasis on the current state of these trees and their role in the light of climate change. Also, sacred trees will be observed and analysed from a socio-cultural aspect. As their guardians throughout the centuries, the citizens of Šumadija are the key in knowledge exchange, finding the trees in the field and data collection from both bio-ecological and socio-cultural aspects. In the spirit of Open Science, the results of this research will be publicly available as an Open Access Database as well as scientific papers. We also plan two workshops with the local population, aimed at raising awareness on the current state of forests, their significance and the specifics of the sacred trees as special specimens in this area. An important output of our project is the initiative for the protection and recognition of sacred trees through intangible cultural heritage by UNESCO.