The Paradieseiche of Sachsenhausen

Frankfurt protects this oak for two reasons, and one of them is a beetle. The city's register entry 035 lists the tree's rare, striking form, and then adds that it is habitat for the stag beetle, a protected species that depends on old oaks. It was not always the main event. The city's own description says it was once just one oak among many in the Stadtwald, the city forest on Frankfurt's south side, and is now a solitary tree that shapes the landscape around it. Somewhere along the way people started calling it the Paradieseiche, the Paradise Oak. The city records the nickname and does not explain it. If you know where it comes from, tell us. The numbers are the city's own. It is 140 to 160 years old, which puts it in the second half of the 19th century, with a trunk about 4.2 metres round, a crown about 20 metres across and a height of 25 metres. For an oak of that age, that is a lot of tree. It stands at the corner of Oberer Schafhofweg and Sachsenhäuser Landwehrweg, on the forest edge in Sachsenhausen-Süd, and you see it from the road. There is nothing to pay and no gate, and a protected zone of 20 metres runs around the trunk.