The Copper Beech of the Badenburg

Every copper beech in Europe descends from an accident. The purple leaf is a mutation that appears rarely and at random in wild green beech forests, and every ornamental one since has been propagated by gardeners who found the freak worth keeping. This one stands about 25 metres south of the Badenburg, the bathing pavilion Joseph Effner built for Elector Max Emanuel between 1718 and 1721 around what is generally reckoned the first heated indoor pool built in Europe since Roman times. Munich's natural monument ordinance protects the tree as a solitary specimen and gives its relationship with that building as the reason, which is a statute saying out loud that where a tree stands can matter as much as how big it is. Local descriptions of the park rank it among the mightiest beeches anywhere in the city. Its age is not documented anywhere. What is documented is the ground: Friedrich Ludwig von Sckell converted these grounds from a French baroque garden into an English landscape park between 1799 and 1823, which is when most of the park's free-standing specimen trees were placed, so a planting inside that window is plausible without being proven. Come in late April and the new leaves open a bright translucent red, darkening to near black by August.