The Copper Beech of Sint-Willibrorduskerk

Nobody can say for certain which revolution this tree commemorates, only that it commemorates one. Standing 21 metres tall with a trunk 4.95 metres around, this copper beech dominates the small square between a rectory and the Sint-Willibrorduskerk in Berchem, and its size and position both point to it having been planted as a vrijheidsboom, a liberty tree, the European tradition of marking a political upheaval by putting a tree in the ground rather than raising a statue. The candidates are 1789, the year the Brabant Revolution briefly threw off Austrian rule, or 1830, the year Belgium itself declared independence, and heritage assessors who protected the tree as a monument in 1949 could not settle on which. It most likely began life inside the rectory's enclosed garden, sheltered there long enough to build the girth and canopy spread, some 32 metres across, that it shows today, before the garden wall came down and left it standing in the open square people see now. Whichever revolution it marks, it has now outlived both the political order it may have celebrated and the one that replaced it.