The trunk this tree started with broke on the night of 20 June 2021, in a storm. The tree did not die, because it had spent the previous 170 years quietly planting itself. A weeping beech lets its branches fall to the ground, and where they touch and stay, they root. Long before the storm arrived, the original had raised a ring of daughter stems out of its own drooping limbs, genetically the same individual, and the City of Lausanne's record says plainly that these perpetuate its existence today. So what stands at the top of Parc de l'Hermitage is less a specimen than a room. Old weeping beeches make a living cave: a curtain of branches down to the floor, a dim hollow inside, and generations of children who work out that you can walk into it. This one went in around 1851 and grew to 4.4 metres round, the landmark at the summit of the park. One source carries all of that, the city's own tree-heritage page, and it is worth saying that we have found no second account and no recent photograph showing how the daughter growth is doing. If you climb up there, we would like to hear what you found. The park itself is free. The art museum in the house beside it charges.
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Getting there
Parc de l'Hermitage, planted approximately 1851
You can recognise it by the shape, a weeping beech's curtain of branches down to the ground, now a ring of daughter stems grown from limbs that rooted where they touched. It stands at the summit of Parc de l'Hermitage.
Free. Public historic park (Fondation de l'Hermitage art museum grounds are separately ticketed, but the park itself is open).
Central Lausanne, uphill from the lakefront, roughly 15-20 minutes' walk from the train station or reachable by bus.
Fresh leavesAutumn colour
May, when the new leaves close the curtain and the inside becomes a green room
The line is our estimate of how much there is to see, not a measurement. Typical for this species where this tree stands; exact weeks shift with the year.
Sources
Where the facts on this page come from. The story was written with AI from these sources, and readers who know the tree correct it.