The Beech of Kagerstraße

A beech that still has its lowest branches has never had a neighbour. In a beech wood the low limbs die in the shade of the canopy and drop off, which is why forest beeches stand like grey columns with nothing on them for the first ten metres. An even crown that sweeps all the way down to the grass is the shape of a tree that grew up in the open with all the light to itself, and that is precisely what Munich's 2021 natural monument ordinance records here: a large solitary tree with an even crown reaching down to the ground. It stands on Kagerstrasse in Ramersdorf-Perlach, in the south-east of the city, on the sort of residential street where a tree this size is the only thing older than the houses. Fagus sylvatica is the species that would cover most of central Europe if we left it alone, and it casts the deepest shade of any tree here, which is why almost nothing grows underneath one. The city recorded no age and no girth, and no second source names it, so the honest answer is that nobody has dated it. If somebody on Kagerstrasse remembers the tree from childhood, or has put a tape around the trunk, that is already more than any register holds.