The Ash at Schloss Solitude

A German tree register measured this ash in May 2026 and got 6.72 metres around the trunk, taken low at 60 centimetres. European ash does not usually reach that. The same visit recorded it 23 metres tall and, in the register's own word, vital: a thick old tree in good condition rather than a monument being propped up. The register puts its age at 250 years. That is the register's own estimate and nobody has counted rings, so we carry it as a band, somewhere between 200 and 300 years; the tree is the same either way. It stands on the lawn in front of Schloss Solitude, the baroque hunting lodge on the ridge west of the city, whose grounds are now free and open at any hour. Only the rooms inside need a ticket. Stuttgart protects it, but not alone. The city's ordinance designates one monument here, a group: this ash plus two sycamore maples, listed together in June 2003 for their character and as habitat. No source has measured the two maples, so the ash is the documented one and the other two are its company. Its trunk forks low into a wide, many-branched crown, which is worth seeing bare. Come in January or February and the whole frame is legible from the grass.