The Schwanheim Old Oaks

Until the 1920s, pigs were driven into this wood to feed under these oaks, and in the Middle Ages sheep, goats, horses and cattle grazed here too. That is the whole explanation for the place: about thirty pedunculate oaks that grew up on open, grazed ground rather than packed into a forest, which is what wood-pasture means. Germany was once full of it. From the 18th century most of it was replaced with spruce plantations, and what survived became a favourite subject for the painters of the Kronberg colony. One of them, Fritz Wucherer, painted 'Bei den Schwanheimer Eichen' in 1899, showing a conspicuous oak whose trunk forks in two. A large reproduction stands on the path, so you can compare the painting with the trees. How old they are depends on which official text you read. The city's own page says up to 500 years; the register as mirrored on German Wikipedia says 600 to 1,000. Several centuries is as far as the sources agree. They are only 12 to 16 metres tall, and the trunks average about 2.75 metres round. The thickest carries thumb-thick galleries bored by the great capricorn beetle, and woodpeckers come for the larvae. Not all the news is good. For some years the oaks have been suffering from climate change, their crowns thinning and branches dying, and some of the group is already dead wood. The Alteichen-Pfad, part of Frankfurt's GrünGürtel, runs through the group. It is open forest, and free.