The Smokovec Beech (Tree of Lovers)

A weeping beech in the middle of Slovakia's best-known mountain resort has a nickname most trees never earn: the Tree of Lovers. Fagus sylvatica f. pendula is an ornamental form of European beech, planted deliberately for its cascading, umbrella-shaped crown rather than found growing wild, and the State Forests service estimated this one at around seventy years old in 2017, which puts it near eighty today. What made it famous is what people do under it: the drooping branches form a natural shelter wide enough to stand inside, and courting couples in Starý Smokovec are said to meet and kiss beneath it, which is how it earned the name Strom zaľúbencov, the Tree of Lovers, in July 2021. A few months later it won Slovakia's national Strom roka contest with 4,833 public votes, a title it collected on charm rather than age: at 250 centimetres round and roughly 13 metres tall, it is a modest tree by this site's usual standard, and its story is entirely about what it looks like and what people do beneath it. It stands in the open in front of the Mountain Rescue Service building, which also houses the Tatra information office, at the centre of Starý Smokovec, the main town of the High Tatras resort. The Tatra Electric Railway stops a short walk away, and nothing stands between the tree and anyone who wants to see it.