The Copper Beech of the Badhuiswal

The purple is a mask. A copper beech leaf is loaded with anthocyanin, which sits over the chlorophyll and hides it, so the green is still down there doing the work while the tree looks almost black from across the water. This one stands on the Badhuiswal, a few steps from the bridge Zwolle calls the Stenen Pijp. Both bodies that have surveyed it call it monumental and municipal property, and both name the copper form rather than the plain beech. They differ only on the date. The national register bands the planting 1860 to 1870; the city's own 2024 list writes it as Fagus sylvatica Atropunicea and puts it at 1910. Same species, same status, same owner, so this is one tree recorded twice with fifty years of uncertainty attached to it. Call it somewhere between 115 and 165 years old and let a girth measurement decide later. Either dating has it standing on this quay before the first cars came down it, and through the occupation and liberation of the city in the 1940s. Come in the first half of May rather than midsummer. The new leaves open thin and translucent red, lit from behind, and hold that for a week or two before the pigment thickens and the whole crown settles into its usual near black purple.