The Beech of Paul Withausenweg

This is the plain, green-leaved beech among a park that otherwise favours its copper and weeping cousins, which makes it the least conspicuous registered tree in Wilhelminapark and one of the largest. Fagus sylvatica is the wild-type European beech, the species every ornamental copper and weeping form has been bred from, and left to grow straight and green it does the thing beeches do best: a dense, smooth-barked trunk holding up a crown so complete that almost nothing grows in the deep shade beneath it. In the park's middle section, along the Paul Withausenweg, it stands among younger, more colourful plantings without competing for attention. The register bands its planting to 1890 to 1900, putting it just past its first century and a quarter. No girth has been recorded. Free, public park, open daily. There is no single dramatic month for a green beech the way there is for its copper relatives elsewhere in this park. Autumn brings a plain gold rather than the copper's colour, but the trunk and the shade it throws are worth the visit at any time of year.