The Gate Beech of the Park Eekhout

The register calls these the poortbomen, the gate trees, which is a job description rather than a species. Planting a pair of matched trees where a path enters a park is one of the oldest moves in the trade. It makes an entrance out of a gap, and it does it without a gate, a wall or a sign. You know you have arrived somewhere because two large trees have agreed to stand opposite each other. On the way out they frame the street. This beech is one of that pair, banded 1860 to 1870, planted into the park that was made on the city's demolished fortifications. Beech was the right choice for the role and a slightly cruel one. The species casts denser shade than any other large tree here, so a gate flanked by two of them is genuinely darker than the ground on either side, and stepping through is a change in light as well as in place. That is the effect, and it took a century and a half to mature. The bark stays smooth and thin all its life, which is why a beech at a park entrance is always the one covered in carved initials.