The Beech of Holmens Kirkegard

The surveyor who measured this beech wrote that the base is almost an elephant's foot, half a metre up the trunk. That is the register's own phrase, and it is a fair description of what root buttresses do to an old beech. The trunk stops being round and starts spreading into the ground in folds. Above the folds it is a straightforward giant, one stem, 5.40 metres round and 19.5 metres tall, recorded healthy at the December 2018 survey. It stands by the western path of Holmens Kirkegård, about fifty metres from the northern corner. The ground is the oldest working cemetery in Copenhagen. Holmens Kirkegård was consecrated in 1666 as the burial ground of the navy, which is why it is also called Skovkirkegården and Bådsmandskirkegården, and it is still in use. Nobody has dated the beech, so it is not being credited with the whole of that. What can be said is that it grew up in a burial ground rather than a park, which is a quieter kind of ground and usually an older one. Only the register names the tree itself. The cemetery's history is well documented and says nothing about this beech in particular.