Somebody looked at this beech and saw a pig. The name stuck: Den Glade Gris, the Happy Pig. It grows in Skåde Skov near Ørnereden, up the forest paths north of Moesgård, and the only official record of it is one register entry sent in by email in July 2020, carrying a GPS position and a description of its growth form: twisted and stunted. That is the entire file. No height, no girth, no age, no planting date. What there is instead is a shape, and shapes like this are made rather than born. A beech browsed by animals, snapped by snow or bent by wind while it is young grows up with its trunk wandering, and once the habit is set it keeps it for the rest of a long life. Danish woods are full of straight beech grown for timber, which is exactly why the crooked ones get named. It reads best in January and February. A beech in leaf hides its own frame, and the frame is the whole point of this one. If you find it, tell us how big it has got and what it actually looks like to you, because nobody has ever measured it and one person's pig is another person's dragon.
Winter shapeAutumn colour
January and February, when the leaves are gone and the twisted frame shows
The line is our estimate of how much there is to see, not a measurement. Typical for this species where this tree stands; exact weeks shift with the year.
Skåde Skov near Ørnereden, close to Moesgård, Højbjerg, AarhusYou can recognise it by its twisted, stunted trunk, best seen bare in January or February before the leaves hide the shape. It stands in Skåde Skov, near Ørnereden.
Free, public forest (Skåde Skov / Moesgård Skov), open access
Bus line 18 from central Aarhus towards Moesgaard Museum, then a walk into Skåde Skov towards Ørnereden (roughly 1.2km north of the main Moesgård tree cluster, along forest paths)
Sources
Where the facts on this page come from.
- In the official register: Dansk Træregister (Dansk Dendrologisk Forening)
- dendron.dk, detaljer
- dendron.dk, detaljer