The Fern-leaved Beech of the National Gallery

Somebody has sawn branches off this beech and the surveyor who recorded it could not work out why. The register's note describes several oddly cut stubs on the trunk, along with a mass of branches sprouting from low down, and offers no explanation for either. Whoever did the cutting left no reason behind. The tree is a fern-leaved beech, 4.37 metres round and 18 metres tall, standing at the northeastern gable of Statens Museum for Kunst with Øster Anlæg opening out behind it. 'Laciniata' is a form of the ordinary European beech whose leaves are cut into narrow, deeply toothed lobes, so at a glance the crown does not read as beech at all. In late October it does what every beech does and turns copper, on leaves shaped like fern fronds. The museum garden was reopened in 2014 deliberately unfenced toward Øster Voldgade and Sølvgade, so the ground the tree stands on is public around the clock. The ticket is only for the building. Only the register carries the tree itself. The museum and its garden are well documented; this beech is not, beyond one survey in December 2019 that measured it and wrote down the cut branches nobody could account for.