The Den Burghstraat Beech of Park Arentsburg

The copper beeches across this park are this tree in fancy dress. Same species, Fagus sylvatica, one colour mutation apart, and this is the plain original, standing at the Den Burghstraat side of Park Arentsburg. The national register dates the planting to between 1830 and 1840, which makes it about 190 years old, and that band is an estimate of when it went in rather than a count of rings. Its first summers were the years the Netherlands spent losing Belgium. Bark is why you walk up to a beech instead of photographing it from the path. It stays smooth and grey for the whole of the tree's life and it stretches as the trunk thickens rather than flaking away, so anything cut into it survives for decades. A carving stays at exactly the height it was made and grows wider and blunter year by year, which is how old park beeches end up wearing initials at head height that nobody now alive remembers cutting. In summer it is the plain green one among the purple crowns, oval leaves where the chestnut along the path holds a hand of five. In the last days of October it turns copper and holds the colour well into November, which is the fortnight worth choosing for the walk. Park Arentsburg lies in Voorburg, in the municipality of Leidschendam-Voorburg, east of The Hague and not inside it.