Philemon

Storms do not read the names. Philemon and Baucis were a pair of ancient oaks on the old Beekhuizen estate, named for Ovid's elderly couple who were turned into an oak and a linden. Storm Ciaran took Baucis at the end of 2023 and left Philemon standing alone. The reply took two years. On 8 December 2025 a sapling grown from one of Baucis's own acorns, kept since 2020 by Joris Hellevoort of the Bomenstichting, was planted almost on the spot where it had stood, and fenced against wildlife. Two local papers turned out for it. Philemon is the older business. Multi-stemmed, about six metres round and 23 metres tall, it is put at 300 to 500 years old, which the register brackets as a planting somewhere between 1520 and 1720. Nobody has dated it more closely. The pair is first mentioned in writing in 1820, and the site appears in a Gelders Archief photograph from the 1930s or 1940s. It is among the oldest trees in the municipality of Rheden. One honest note. No source says in so many words that Philemon still stands. Every account since the storm is about Baucis, none of them mentions a second loss, and bomenbieb still lists Philemon as alive. If you get there and find otherwise, tell us. It sits on public estate ground beside Hotel Beekhuizen, on the signed Ommetje Beekhuizen, free.