The Beech Below the Summer Palace, Hvezda
Liboc, Praha 6
This beech was protected for its height, not its age. When Prague listed it as a memorial tree on 9 September 2002, the reason given was that it is the tallest tree in the beech stand growing in this corner of Obora Hvezda: roughly 40 metres, on a trunk that stays straight almost the whole way up, with root buttresses flaring out where it meets the ground. The protection zone is a circle eleven metres out from the bark. It is also one of the few trees here whose growing you can watch in the paperwork. The girth has been taken three times: 306 centimetres in the older listing, 332 in September 2013, 337 at the nature agency's 2024 update. Thirty centimetres of new wood in two decades, laid down while visitors walked past below it. The age is softer than the measurements. The best any source offers is approximately 150 years, stated that loosely by the survey that recorded the 2013 girth, and it stays loose here rather than being tidied into a planting date. Add the years since and it is a little more. It stands on the path most people take down from the Hvezda summer palace toward the Ruzynska gate. Two other beeches in the reserve carry the same protection and are easily confused with it; this is the one below the palace.
From people who stood here
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Getting there
In Obora Hvezda (the Hvezda game reserve), on the path descending from the Hvezda summer palace (Letohradek Hvezda) toward the Ruzynska gate, Liboc, Prague 6
You can recognise it by its height, about 40 metres and the tallest in this stand of beeches, on a trunk that runs straight most of the way up from flaring root buttresses. It stands on the path from the summer palace to the Ruzynska gate.
Free, public nature reserve (Obora Hvezda), open year round, same regime as the three other Hvezda trees already published (prg_005, prg_024, prg_025)
Tram line 22 to Bila Hora, then a walk through Obora Hvezda toward the summer palace; exact walking distance from the tram stop not measured this pass (roughly 500 m by straight-line map distance from the reserve's edge)
Autumn colour
October to November: copper and russet, and young trees keep dead leaves all winter
The line is our estimate of how much there is to see, not a measurement. Typical for this species where this tree stands; exact weeks shift with the year.
Sources
Where the facts on this page come from. The story was written with AI from these sources, and readers who know the tree correct it.
- In the official register: Památné stromy (AOPK ČR, Ústřední seznam ochrany přírody), no. 104281
- AOPK CR memorial-tree register, kod 104281, CC BY 4.0, https://gis.nature.cz/arcgis/rest/services/PamatneStromy/PamatneStromy/MapServer/1
- cs.wikipedia.org
- turistika.cz
- gis.nature.cz
