Birds nest in this beech, and a fungus is eating it, and both facts are in the official record. When Czech conservationists inspected the tree in 2019 they noted a large branch torn away and a big open wound, rot, tinder fungus fruiting at the base of the crown, and a smaller cavity in use as a nest. Fifteen years earlier, in 2004, the same record had found one open cavity and a crown only five percent dead. It is a veteran in the full sense of the word: old enough to be falling apart, and still doing it slowly. It stands by a former pond on the edge of Nová Ves pod Pleší, roughly forty kilometres southwest of Prague, which is where the name comes from: Buk u rybníčku, the beech by the little pond. The state declared it a memorial tree in September 2004. A regional heritage site counts it as one of the village's two memorial trees and says stories have already grown up around it, without telling us which. The trunk is 308 centimetres round. That is modest for a lone park beech and respectable for one that grew up with neighbours competing for light, which is what this one is. Nobody has published an age for it, and we are not going to invent one. If you know the village's stories, or when the pond was drained, we would like to hear them.
By a former pond on the edge of the village, Nová Ves pod Pleší, Příbram District, Central Bohemian Region You can recognise it by the storm wound where a large branch tore off in 2019, and the tinder fungus at the base of the crown. It is a beech, 308 centimetres round, by the old pond outside the village.
Free, on open ground by a pond at the edge of the village; no gate or ticket found in any source
Nová Ves pod Pleší village, Příbram District; about 9km from Dobříš, roughly 40km southwest of Prague; no direct public transport to the pond itself