Berlin's Tallest Tree

For decades Berlin's tallest tree was the wrong tree. The record belonged to the Burgsdorff Larch, planted in 1795 by the forester whose name it carries and measured by climbers at 45 metres in 2000 and 42.5 in 2012. Then an airborne laser survey scanned the city's forests in 2021 and put the larch at 41.05 metres. The same scan found a beech 180 metres to the west standing at 43.15, and the title changed hands. Regional press reported the new holder in October 2022 and RBB television filmed it a year after that. The larch itself came down in a storm in June 2025. Nothing on the ground announces any of this. The beech has no register entry and no protection order, and no name has stuck to it: Friedensbuche and Hohe Buche have both been floated and neither took. Forestry records date its planting to 1843, which makes it about 183 years old, no age at all beside the yews and oaks elsewhere on this site, and quite enough to have stood through the German Empire, two world wars and the forty years when this forest sat at the edge of West Berlin. Its trunk measures 96 centimetres across, so roughly three metres round, which is unremarkable. Height is the whole argument here. The Tegelsee forestry office has put a sign on the trail pointing at it, which helps more than it sounds: a stand of tall beeches gives away nothing about which one is tallest.