What is the oldest tree in Zwieslerwaldhaus?
The Waldhaustanne, a silver fir in the Bayerischer Wald National Park near Zwieslerwaldhaus. At about 53 metres it is Germany's tallest known silver fir, and at roughly 605 years old, its oldest documented one too. It is the only tree mapped here, published alone under the single-tree exception.
A family out walking in the Bavarian Forest in 2020 noticed a fir that looked implausibly large, and reported it. Prof. Dr. Andreas Roloff of TU Dresden went out to measure it for the Deutsche Dendrologische Gesellschaft's national register of heritage trees, and confirmed what the family had guessed: at about 53 metres tall and 6.93 metres round, it is Germany's tallest and thickest documented silver fir, and at roughly 605 years old, also its oldest. On 23 June 2023 it became National Heritage Tree No. 26. It stands in an old-growth fir stand inside the Bayerischer Wald National Park, Germany's oldest national park and, joined to Czech territory across the border, one of central Europe's largest stretches of protected forest. A 2023 biodiversity survey found 274 species living in and on the tree itself, from lichens to insects to the birds that nest in its upper branches. The tree is reached on a forest path about 500 metres from the Brechhäuslau car park. A wooden boardwalk carries visitors past it rather than up to the trunk, built specifically to keep foot traffic off the root zone that has kept the tree alive for six centuries.
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