The Great Beech of Parc de l'Orangerie

Strasbourg's oldest park is full of beeches and the register singles out one of them: more than four metres around the trunk, with a crown the city calls exceptionally well developed. In a beech that combination is unusual. A forest beech grows tall and narrow, and only spreads like this when it has had open ground and no competition for a very long time. The Parc de l'Orangerie gave it exactly that. The park was laid out in 1692 for the governor of Alsace, which makes it older than almost every French public garden that was not royal, and it was rebuilt as an English landscape park in the 1800s, the moment when planting fashion changed from avenues to single specimen trees standing alone. The pavilion at its centre carries the Empress Josephine's name. The same grounds now hold a zoo, a lake, a stork colony and the grandest green space in the city. No age has been published for this beech and no journalist has written about it, so its dimensions are all anyone has recorded. European beech has thin, smooth bark that carves easily and scars permanently, which is why the old ones in busy parks end up covered in initials. Look down as well. On a beech this size the roots run over the surface like cables.