Li Béni Hesse

This beech has got smaller. It measured eight metres round at a metre and a half from the ground in 2007. In December 2023 it came in at 7.15 metres, because the southern side of the trunk had partially collapsed in the years between. The earlier readings show the climb up to that figure: 6.05 metres in 1977, 6.63 in 1996. It is still one of the largest beeches in Belgium, and it stood 17 metres tall when anyone last measured the height. Li Béni Hesse is Walloon for roughly the blessed beech, and the blessing is the local half of the story. By tradition, funeral processions leaving Bonnerue for the cemetery at Vellereux stopped at this tree so the dead could be blessed on the way. The hollow trunk is said to hold a cross put there before the French Revolution, though nobody has documented it. The tree was pollarded during its working life. Nobody has dated it. The damaged trunk also rules out working backwards from the girth, which is how a beech without papers usually gets an age. If you know when it went in, tell us. The account of that 2023 visit describes one healthy section on the northern side, a dying branch to the west, and the tree standing and in leaf. Barbed wire is wound round the trunk to stop visitors damaging it further, so this is one to look at rather than touch.