The Hornbeam of Wilrampark

Hornbeam is the hardest wood in the European forest, and it was never meant to become a tree like this. Carpenters cut it for the parts that had to survive being hit: mill cogs, the teeth of wooden gearwheels, butchers' blocks, ox yokes. It blunts tools and it burns hotter than oak. The English name says as much twice over, horn for hardness and beam for tree. A wood that useful was normally coppiced or laid into a hedge and cut back every few years, which is why a full-grown solitary hornbeam is a scarce thing. This one was left alone, and Munich's 2021 natural monument ordinance protects it as a solitary tree with an even crown, rare in Munich at this size. It stands in Wilrampark in Ramersdorf-Perlach, just south of the playground, which makes it easy to find and easy to sit under. Look at the trunk rather than the crown: hornbeam grows fluted, with muscular vertical ridges running up it like tensed sinew, and nothing else in the park has that surface. No age is on record, here or anywhere else, and the city register keeps no girth column either. If you have put a tape around this trunk, we would like the number for the page.