Hainich National Park maps one tree: the Betteleiche, the begging oak, split into two fused shells you can walk through where medieval friars once collected alms from travellers crossing the forest. It is the symbol of the park, with a waymarked trail named after it, reached only on foot, 45 minutes or more from the nearest trailhead. Published alone here because it is the destination, not because the park's research is finished.
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The Betteleiche
Oak (Quercus sp.) · roughly 600 to 800 years · Nationalpark Hainich (Kammerforst/Muehlhausen area)
Monks are said to have cut a hollow into this oak so that the alms would stay dry. From 1442 to 1525 a Franciscan mendicant house stood at nearby Ihlefeld, an annex of the St Catherine's monastery at Eisenach, and travellers crossing the forest left coins and prayer requests for the friars at the tree rather than at the door. The name stuck: Betteleiche, the begging oak.
What people walk in to see now is the shape. The trunk stands as two shells that fuse again about four metres up, a gateway you can step through, and centuries of weather have widened the gap. The tree is 13 metres tall, short for an oak of this weight, and about 5.9 metres round at a metre above the ground, though one summary puts it nearer 5.6. Sources agree on 600 to 800 years, and none of them cored it to find out.
It is the symbol of Nationalpark Hainich, with a waymarked trail named after it, the Betteleichenweg, and the Rennstieg and Hainichlandweg crossing at the same point. Reaching it means 45 minutes of walking or more from the nearest trailhead, in whatever the weather is doing. Which oak it is remains open: the sources say only Eiche, sessile or pedunculate unsettled. If you know, tell us.
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