The Wertheimsteinpark Copper Beech

This copper beech was the last of four. On 8 February 2012 Vienna protected four trees in the Wertheimsteinpark on a single day, a lime, a Turkish hazel, a service tree and this one, Natural Monument 826, and together they make the park one of the few places in the city where you can collect a whole set in one short walk, all four within about two hundred metres. The designation praised it for a splendid free-standing crown and for its vitality, which is the right emphasis. Nothing crowds it. The crown spreads about 16 metres, and the city's tree cadastre puts the height in the 21 to 25 metre class, so this is a tree built to be walked around rather than past. The trunk measured 3.40 metres round at a metre above the ground when it was protected. The cadastre's own, later figure is 3.60 metres, so it has kept growing. The city estimated its age at about a hundred years in 2012, which puts it somewhere past a century and a decade now: an estimate, not a planting record, since the cadastre leaves the planting year blank. Copper beeches open their leaves purple in spring and darken through summer. Come in October and the whole crown goes copper before it falls.