The Second Beech of Kontumazgarten

Two trees in this park would be here without anyone's help, and both of them are beeches. European beech is the natural dominant of central Germany: left alone, most of Franconia would return to beech forest within a couple of centuries, shading out nearly everything else. The horse chestnut in this park came from the Balkans and the three planes are a garden hybrid that did not exist before the seventeenth century, which leaves this beech and its neighbour as the locals. It is ND-11 on Nuremberg's 2020 natural monument ordinance, the last of the six protected trees in the Kontumazgarten. As with the rest of them the register is the entire file: species, position, protection, and no age, measurement or description anywhere. Beech also suffers in cities, which is the other half of why an old one in a small urban park earns a listing. It has shallow roots, thin bark that scalds in full sun, and little tolerance for compacted ground or drought, all of which a public lawn supplies in quantity. Late October and November is the time to come, when it turns copper and holds it, and the ground underneath fills with beech mast, small triangular nuts in prickly husks that were fed to pigs for centuries before anyone thought of a park.