The Kabouterboom

Children in Beek have been told for generations that gnomes live inside this tree, which is how a sweet chestnut came to be called the Gnome Tree. It is an easy story to believe. The trunk is hollow, at least eight and a half metres around, and the openings in it are the size of doorways. That girth makes it the thickest tree in the Netherlands, and the hollowness is why nobody can say how old it is: there is no core left to count. Estimates run from three hundred years to four hundred and fifty. The register that lists it puts the planting between 1600 and 1700 and notes that chestnuts have probably been grown around Nijmegen since the Romans, who liked the crop and liked this ridge. In January 2005 children set it on fire. It burned inside, which a hollow tree does readily, and everyone assumed that was the end of four centuries. It leafed out again that spring and has gone on since. It stands in the Kastanjedal, a valley of old chestnuts in the Heerlijkheid Beek estate, which Het Geldersch Landschap keeps open to walkers.