Svalebøgen

Local tradition says this beech started as a mouse's winter larder. A hoard of beech nuts buried in one spot germinated together, and the stems thickened into each other as they grew, which is why the thing standing at the eastern end of Stokkebro reads as one colossal tree and is really several. The Danish Dendrological Society put a tape around it in 1995 and got 12.52 metres, a figure that goes round the whole fused mass rather than any single stem. Gjerrild calls it Denmark's oldest beech and its biggest tree. The age everyone repeats is about 300 years, and the village's own account says plainly that nobody knows exactly, so hold the number loosely. It is coming apart, and there is no point pretending otherwise. One of the trunks collapsed on 9 June 2022. The municipality pruned the rest back for safety, warned that more looked likely to follow, and has cordoned off parts of the ground beneath it at times since. Gjerrild's own visitor page now describes the tree as in declining condition and still open to visitors, which is the honest version: an old beech letting go slowly, with benches under it and people still eating their lunch there. The residents' association has planted a successor a little to the southeast. That one needs a couple of centuries. This is the one to go and stand under now.