A reader found this one, on the Schönberg above Ebringen, in fog. The photograph shows a beech that has not grown the way beeches in a managed forest grow. Instead of one straight grey column it splits low into several thick stems, throws its limbs out sideways, and one of them bends down almost to the ground before turning up again. Moss and lichen cover the bark. Somebody has fixed a small label to that low limb, Rotbuche, Fagus sylvatica, which is the only writing about this tree we know of. Beeches with this shape are usually the ones that were left standing when the trees around them were cut, or that grew at the edge of a pasture with light on every side and spread wide instead of going up. We do not know which this is. No register lists it, no article names it, and the reader gave no age or girth. The photograph says enough on its own: a trunk you would stop for. The Schönberg is Freiburg's southern neighbour, 644 metres high, with beech forest over much of its slopes. The tree stands on the Riemenweg, a forest road on the Ebringen side, and the summit and the Schneeburg ruin are the usual reasons people walk up there. If you go, a tape around the trunk, a wider photograph of where it stands, or anything you know about it would make this page longer.
Autumn colour
The line is our estimate of how much there is to see, not a measurement. Typical for this species where this tree stands; exact weeks shift with the year.
Riemenweg, Schönberg forest above Ebringen, Landkreis Breisgau-HochschwarzwaldA beech that splits low into several thick, moss-covered stems instead of one straight column; a small Rotbuche label is fixed to the low limb that bends down toward the ground.
Free, in open forest on the Schönberg. A forest road, no gate, no opening hours.
Regional trains from Freiburg Hauptbahnhof stop at Ebringen in under a quarter of an hour; from the village it is a climb of roughly 2.5 km through the forest to the Riemenweg. Allow about an hour each way on foot.
