The Lustbuhel Sweet Chestnut

A storm once snapped the top off this chestnut, and it carried on regardless. The only dated picture of it, taken in May 2014, shows the damage plainly: a very thick trunk, deeply furrowed, a splintered end where the leader used to rise, and a set of younger limbs climbing past the break. It stands at the edge of a public car park on Waltendorfer Hauptstrasse, at the foot of the Lustbühel, the hill on the eastern side of Graz that is kept under landscape protection. A fence runs behind it, so the trunk may sit on the boundary of a field. You look at it from the car park side, which is close enough to take in the girth. Styria lists it as Naturdenkmal 1121, which protects it by law, and that is very nearly all the record says: the species, a public owner, a point on the map. No age, no girth, no height, no planting date. The 2014 photograph was taken within a metre of the register's own point, so there is no doubt which tree this is. What nobody has written down since 2014 is how it is doing, and a tree that has already lost its top is the kind worth checking on. If you have stood in front of it recently, tell us how it looks, and if you have a tape measure, how far it is round the trunk.