The Beech of Bastion Beck

In twenty-three years this beech added one centimetre to its trunk. The register has it at 1.30 metres around the year 2000 and 1.31 in 2023. Height it did manage, going from 22 metres to 22.7, and the crown has grown in one direction only: full and wide out over the Petrusse valley, cramped and short on the side where the fortress wall stands. A tree that has spent its life leaning away from masonry ends up shaped like the gap it was given. Its branches were braced by arborists some years before the last survey, which is what happens to a tree the state has decided to keep. You reach it on foot from Avenue Marie-Therese, down into the valley, past the Pont Adolphe and along the path to an old transformer building. The beech is on the right. The whole descent takes about ten minutes from Place de la Constitution and the path is public the entire way. Nobody has dated it. The source that describes it in most detail will go no further than saying its age surely exceeds a hundred years, and we have left that as it is rather than sharpening it into a number that would look better and mean less.