The Copper Beech of the Old Cemetery, Dachau

When it was photographed in mid-September 2023, this copper beech already had the thin crown of a tree in November. The photographer said so plainly in his caption: the tree did not look healthy, and its leaves were sparse before autumn leaf fall had even begun. It was alive that summer, in leaf if not in full leaf. How it looks today is something a visitor can tell us better than any record can. It stands in Dachau's Alter Stadtfriedhof, the old town cemetery, and the county list that protects it as a natural monument gives directions rather than coordinates: about 20 metres inside the Jocherstraße entrance, on the left. Those directions and two separate map points agree on the spot, so this is one tree you will not have to hunt for among the graves. The same list puts its age at about 160 years. That figure arrives without a date or a method attached, so read it as a band, somewhere between 140 and 190 years. Either way, it has spent well over a century among the town's graves. A copper beech is the purple-leaved form of the common beech. No girth or height has been published for this one. This is a working cemetery, so stand quietly and keep to the paths. It is about a kilometre on foot from Dachau station, which the S2 reaches from central Munich in roughly 25 minutes.