Graz protected this hornbeam in 2019, and the register gives it nothing else: no age, no girth, no story beyond a plot number in the cadastral map of St. Leonhard. Most of Austria's monumental trees at least carry a measurement. This one carries only a square. The tree stands on Tegetthoffplatz, a public square a short tram ride from the Elisabethstrasse cluster, and the only independent confirmation of exactly where is a photograph taken in December 2020, its own coordinates matching the register's point almost exactly. The photographer's caption places the tree against the backdrop of the Seebacher Gymnasium, but the school is only scenery: the hornbeam itself grows on open public ground, not the school's. Naturdenkmal designation in Austria protects a tree for what it already is rather than for a story attached to it, and Tegetthoffplatz's hornbeam is a case in point: nobody wrote down when it was planted, nobody has taped its trunk, and the closest thing to a document is the 2019 decree that made cutting it down illegal. If you have measured it, or know when it went in, tell us. Until then it stands on its own square, three hundred and fifty metres from its nearest neighbour on this list, waiting for someone to write the rest of its history.
Tegetthoffplatz, 8010 Graz You can recognise it by being the only hornbeam on Tegetthoffplatz, with no plaque or measurement to go by. It stands on the open square, about 350 metres from the Elisabethstrasse plane.
Free, on a public city square (Tegetthoffplatz)
Tegetthoffplatz tram stop (Line 1), right at the square
