Berlin's register takes the trouble to say exactly which beech this is: Gewoehnliche Buche, Rot-Buche, the plain green common beech. The name trips people up. Rotbuche means red beech, but it refers to the pinkish timber, not the leaves, and the purple-leaved copper beech planted in so many old parks is a separate form. This one is the original, the tree that would cover most of central Europe if people let it. That is not an exaggeration. Left alone, beech outcompetes nearly everything on ordinary soils, mostly by shade: its leaves are layered so tightly that very little light reaches the ground, and seedlings of other trees give up underneath it. The bark stays smooth and silver-grey into old age, which is why beech trunks across Europe carry carved initials that have stretched with the tree for decades. Its spot is south of the Kleiner Stern, one of the path junctions in the eastern Tiergarten, and east of the Rosengarten. In late October and early November the crown goes from green to copper and orange, and the leaves that drop make a dry, rustling carpet that lasts most of the winter. Berlin lists it as Naturdenkmal 1-96/B and records neither its age nor its size. If you can get a tape around the trunk, we would like the figure.
beech mast, small triangular nuts in prickly huskscopper and russet, and young trees keep dead leaves all winter
late October into November, when the crown turns copper and orange
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.
Grosser Tiergarten, south of the Kleiner Stern, east of the Rosengarten You can recognise it by the smooth silver-grey bark and green, not purple, leaves. It stands just south of the Kleiner Stern junction, east of the Rosengarten.
Free; Grosser Tiergarten is a public park open at all hours.
S Bellevue about 12 min walk
Sources
Where the facts on this page come from.