The Weeping Beech of the Oude Hortus

A glass wall exists in Groningen because of this tree. When the university rebuilt the Muntinggebouw beside the Oude Hortus, the architects set a window into the new facade specifically so this weeping beech would still be visible from Nieuwe Kijk in 't Jatstraat outside, rather than being hidden behind a solid wall the way ordinary landscaping usually loses to construction. The garden's own visitor folder calls it "het pronkjuweel van de Oude Hortus," the showpiece of the Old Hortus, and its cascading, overhanging crown is the reason: Fagus sylvatica "Pendula" grows its branches down and outward rather than up, forming a green curtain rather than a canopy. The garden's folder dates the planting to 1876; the Dutch national monumental tree register instead gives a broader 1880s band, so treat the age, around a hundred and fifty years, as bracketed between two sources rather than pinned to one. Construction work by the university in 1996 threatened its roots, and the tree was given formal protection at that point, a decision the glass wall later echoed. The Oude Hortus itself began in 1626 as the university's working botanical garden, moved its living collection to Hortus Haren in 1967, and stayed open afterward as public parkland. Free, roughly twenty minutes from Centraal by foot.