The Ash of Pasinger Stadtpark

This ash branches low, and for an ash that is unusual enough to be the reason it is protected. Grown in a wood, Fraxinus excelsior runs straight up as a clean pole and puts its crown out at the top where the light is; foresters like it for exactly that. This one carries a mighty crown set low on the trunk, which is how Munich's 2021 natural monument ordinance describes it, along with the way it dominates the landscape around it. It means the branches are within sight rather than overhead, and the tree reads as a shape rather than a column. It stands in Pasinger Stadtpark, the park strung along the Wurm on its way north out of Lake Starnberg, ten minutes on foot from Pasing station. The ash is worth timing: it is the last big tree in the park to come into leaf, often not until well into May, and among the first to drop, which gives it a shorter summer than anything standing next to it. In winter you can pick it out by the buds, matt black and blunt, unlike any other tree here. The register carries no age or girth for it and no second source names it, so its years are an open question. Answers welcome.