Copper BeechNobody has published a photograph of this tree under a licence we can use. Send us yours and it goes on this page.

The Copper Beech of the Hertenkamp

Years old116-126
SpeciesCopper Beech

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How do I find it? You can recognise it by the dark purple-red foliage on the east side of the Hertenkamp deer park. A similar copper beech near the park's flower clock, thirty metres off, is now only a stump after Storm Poly felled it in 2023.

Storm Poly came through Alkmaar on 5 July 2023 and felled more than five hundred trees in an afternoon, with roughly two hundred more damaged badly enough to matter. One casualty was a copper beech in this same park, thirty metres or so away near the flower clock, cut down now to a stump about four metres tall. This beech, its near neighbour and near-twin, is the one that stood. Only the national register names it, and only in a single line: it probably dates, the register says, from the Springer period, without a firmer date than that. The Alkmaarderhout itself is one of the oldest public parks in the Netherlands, laid out in 1607 and rebuilt into its present form by the landscape architect L.A. Springer around 1900 to 1903, the same years the deer park beside it, the Hertenkamp, was established. So the register is placing this tree at the edge of that rebuilding rather than dating it outright. Beyond that one line, nothing: no planting record, no newspaper mention, just the fact that it survived a storm that took its neighbour down. If you know more about it, tell us.

Species
Copper Beech (Fagus sylvatica f. purpurea)
Location
East side of the Hertenkamp (deer park), Westerhoutpark / Alkmaarderhout (Alkmaarderhout / Westerhoutpark)
Access
Free. Public city park (Alkmaarderhout), one of the oldest in the Netherlands, laid out from 1607.
Getting there
Central Alkmaar, roughly 15-20 minute walk or short bus ride from Alkmaar Centraal station

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Sources

Where the facts on this page come from.

Trees nearby

The Plane of the Alkmaarderhoutroughly 165 to 175 years, from the register's planting band of 1850 to 1860 · 30 m awayThe Horse Chestnut behind Koekenbierroughly 120 years · 290 m awayThe Lime by the Mill of Pietroughly 125 to 135 years, from the register's planting band of 1890 to 1900 · 780 m away

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This page was researched from a distance. If you know this tree, you know things we do not: the species, the age, the size, whether the photo shows the right tree, or that it is gone. Every field on this page can be corrected.

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