The Copper Beech of Nispen Cemetery

The thickest beech in Roosendaal's part of the national tree register is really three trunks grown into one. At chest height the copper beech at the gate of Nispen's parish cemetery measures 4.9 metres round, more than any other beech the register lists for Roosendaal. Look lower and the trick shows: 40 centimetres above the ground it is three stems, fused higher up into one flat, oval column. The register says so itself, so read the 490 as the girth of a fused mass rather than of a single trunk. The height needs no footnote. It stands 26 metres tall, a purple crown over the corner where the cemetery entrance meets Heijbeeksestraat. The Bomenstichting's Landelijk Register Monumentale Bomen puts its planting in the decade 1840 to 1850, which makes it roughly 175 years old. That register is the only source behind this entry, but it is a recent one: an inspector looked at the tree in September 2023 and kept it on the list as monumental. The ground belongs to the parish of the Maria Hemelvaartkerk, whose church stands in front of the cemetery. You can see it from the street without going in. Nispen lies about six kilometres south of Roosendaal, close to the Belgian border, and the lime the village planted in 1909 for the birth of Princess Juliana stands 650 metres away.