The Copper Beech of Nieuw-Schoonebeek

The church is gone and only the tower is left. The presbytery has been rebuilt out of recognition. The park is still there, and so is this beech. A fine park was laid out at the old presbytery of the Catholic church of St Bonifatius in Nieuw-Schoonebeek at the beginning of the twentieth century. The beech, banded 1750 to 1800, is far older than that and was standing long before anyone laid out anything, which is the same pattern as almost every other church tree in this country: the ground was already planted and the institution arrived to join it. If the band is right, this is as old as the lime at the Noordeind and one of the oldest trees in the municipality. A copper beech at two and a half centuries in a Drenthe village is also slightly improbable. The purple form was a scarce nursery product in the eighteenth century, largely confined to estates and botanic collections, so somebody with money and connections put it here. October, when it burns through to copper against a medieval tower stump.