The Copper Beech of the Old Library

This copper beech stands where Amersfoort's old public library used to be, on the east side of the Zonnehof, and it has outlasted the building it once stood beside. Copper beech is not a separate species but a colour form of the ordinary European beech, its leaves carrying a red pigment on top of the usual green, which is why the whole crown reads dark purple-bronze rather than green from any distance. Amersfoort already has more than one of these registered within the town centre, and this is among the oldest. The register bands its planting to the 1860s, close to a century and three quarters old, which makes it a decade or two senior to the copper beeches at the Amershof and the Zonnehof building nearby. Free, public green strip in the centre of town, no gate. October is the month, when the copper deepens toward black just before the leaves drop.