The Beech of the Englischer Garten

This beech was already old when the park around it was new. The Englischer Garten was laid out from 1789 on the orders of Elector Karl Theodor, designed by the American-born Sir Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford, as one of the first public parks on the European continent, open to everyone rather than reserved for a court. Most of what grows in the park today dates from that design and its later 19th century expansion, but this beech, standing between the Forstweg and Friedrich-Ludwig-von-Sckell-Weg paths near the park's second riding trail, predates the whole project, described in Munich's own natural monument register as over 300 years old and the outstanding tree of its immediate surroundings. That would put its origins in the very early 18th century or before, decades ahead of Rumford's landscaping crews, meaning the park's designers either built around an existing tree or the beech simply outgrew whatever else stood nearby before them. No individual measurement or precise felling-based age exists for it, so the three-century figure is treated here as the registered estimate it is rather than a settled fact.