The Old Copper Beech of Servaasbolwerk

Two beeches stand roughly 45 metres apart on the same small stretch of Servaasbolwerk, and it is easy to walk past one thinking you have already seen the other. This one is the older by a wide margin. The Dutch national monumental tree register bands its planting to the 1880s, decades before the neighbouring copper beech went into the ground in 1945 as a liberation memorial. Both wear the same deep red foliage that turns darker through autumn, which is exactly what makes the two easy to confuse on a walk along the old singel parkland. The distinction matters because one tree carries a specific historical claim, a wartime memorial planted the year Germany surrendered, and the other does not. This is the other: a beech that was already sixty years old when its younger neighbour was planted, with a trunk that has since thickened to four metres around. Its exact planting year has not been pinned down closer than a decade, so treat any single year you read elsewhere with some suspicion. It stands on public gemeente parkland, part of the belt of bastions and gardens that replaced Utrecht's old city defences, open at any hour with nothing to buy a ticket for.