The Waldhaustanne (Zwieslerwaldhaus Silver Fir)
roughly 605 yearsSilver Fir
Germany's tallest, thickest and oldest documented silver fir went unrecorded until 2020, when a family out walking reported it. Andreas Roloff of TU Dresden verified the measurements for the German Dendrological Society, and on 23 June 2023 the tree was entered as National Heritage Tree No. 26. The figures earn it: 6.93 metres around the trunk when measured in January 2023, about 53 metres tall, and roughly 605 years old, which puts its first summers in the early 1400s. A survey in 2023 counted 274 species living in and on it. At that point a tree is less an organism than an address. It stands at about 1,360 metres in an old-growth fir stand roughly a kilometre and a half from the Czech border, inside the Bayerischer Wald National Park. That park is Germany's oldest, and the protected forest simply carries on across the border as the Czech Šumava, so the trees here have spent the last half century inside one of the largest wild woodlands in central Europe. Getting to it is about 500 metres of marked forest path from the nearest car park. A wooden boardwalk carries visitors past the trunk to keep boots off the root plate, so this is a tree you look up at from a walkway rather than one you put a hand on.
The button above opens directions in your maps app. No train/bus station nearby; reached via the Brechhaeuslau car park near Zwieslerwaldhaus, then a c. 500m walk on a marked forest path.
- Species
- Silver Fir (Abies alba)
- Age estimate
- roughly 605 years
- Location
- Bayerischer Wald National Park, near Zwieslerwaldhaus, on the forest path from the Brechhaeuslau car park towards Schwellhaeusl, about 1,360m elevation below the Grosser Rachel summit (Zwieslerwaldhaus, Nationalpark Bayerischer Wald)
- Access
- Free. Inside Bayerischer Wald National Park (Germany's oldest national park), on a forest path roughly 500m from the Brechhaeuslau car park; a wooden boardwalk protects the root zone, so visitors stay on the walkway rather than approaching the trunk directly.
- Getting there
- No train/bus station nearby; reached via the Brechhaeuslau car park near Zwieslerwaldhaus, then a c. 500m walk on a marked forest path.
Ticking this one off, walks past several more, and your collection growing city by city: that is the Ancient Trees app.
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