Beautiful oak (Harreshausen)
The beautiful oak is a striking pedunculate oak that stands north of the Hessian Harreshausen . It is a columnar oak .
history
This tree and its offspring produced by vegetative propagation form the Quercus robur Fastigiata variety . It has attracted the attention of foresters , botanists and natural scientists since its discovery in the 17th century because of its characteristic growth . It is considered certain that all column oaks that exist in Central and Northern Europe, which are also called pyramid or cypress oaks because of their growth shape, descend from her .
Location
Coordinates: 49 ° 58 ′ 40 ″ N , 8 ° 59 ′ 5 ″ E
The beautiful oak is located in a district of Babenhausen in the Darmstadt-Dieburg district in southern Hesse , about 25 kilometers southeast of Frankfurt am Main at about 120 meters above sea level, about 600 meters north of Harreshausen and 2.5 kilometers northeast of Babenhausen. It stands in a small group of trees and bushes made of young oak, linden , hawthorn and lilac , framed by a wooden fence in the middle of a field.
description
The beautiful oak has a regularly conical shape and in the lower area completely knot-free trunk with a circumference of 4.21 meters, measured at a height of one meter. The crown only begins at a height of twelve meters; there the trunk ends abruptly. The side shoots do not grow more or less horizontally, as in other oaks, but straight upwards. They strive for a short horizontal shoot upwards so that the main branches are roughly parallel. The rather irregular shape goes back to two lightning strikes in 1871 and 1928, during which large parts of the treetop were lost.
Age
The beautiful oak is one of the oldest trees in Hessen. Estimates in 1940 put it at 500 years. Two cores were taken, with the help of which the Babenhausen Forestry Office determined the age, which is very high compared to other oaks with a trunk circumference of only 4.21 meters. Such a high age in relation to the trunk diameter is usually only found in yew trees in Germany .
history
Origin and Discovery
The beautiful oak is a dendrological peculiarity, a so-called bud mutation of the pedunculate oak (see: somatic mutation ). This is obviously not scientifically proven. This tree probably grew in a columnar shape as a seedling (around the year 1450). Around 1700, Count Johann Reinhard III. von Hanau shot a single branch, which was striving sideways to the north and had mutated back into its normal form, with a rifle by his chief forester . At that time the oak was already known as a specialty. The public discovered the tree around 1740. The area around the tree was cleared. In later times the entire forest was cleared to obtain pastureland , the beautiful oak was left standing alone as a so-called overhanger .
Growing awareness
A general of the French troops, who occupied the Landgraviate of Hesse from 1759 to 1763 during the Seven Years' War , is said to have posted a guard to protect the tree so that units passing through would not use the oak or parts of it as firewood for a campfire. The general also had her seeds sent to France so that attempts at cultivation could be undertaken in his home country.
The oldest drawing of the pyramid oak dates from 1766. It shows the tree cut out and framed by a small, square gate. The nearest normal-growing oaks and pines are at a greater distance. A report about the oak by Johann Christoph Stockhausen can be found in the Hanauischer Magazin from 1781:
“Beautiful, straight, of an airy growth, and in proportions of trunk and branches that the painter could not have given it better in an ideal, it stands there - the graceful oak, and with its conical tip protrudes over the other lower trees , their neighbors, like Calypso over their nymphs. "
At the time, the beautiful oak was around 100 feet (about 30 meters) tall. The stem was about 40 feet (twelve meters) and the crown about 60 feet (18 meters). In 1789 the beautiful oak served as the title copper for the forest archive. In Gardeners Chronicle it appeared in 1824. At that time it was only 18 meters high and had a trunk circumference of 3.45 meters.
Since 1795 is documented that regular Reiser for vegetative propagation of Fine Oak were taken. The oldest known tree obtained in this way is still in the Bergpark Wilhelmshöhe near Kassel . It is considered certain that all existing pyramid oaks in Central and Northern Europe originate from the beautiful oak near Harreshausen. These cultivated oaks come either from vegetative propagation or from one of the numerous seed deliveries. The seeds were sent to many European countries since the end of the 18th century under the botanist Borkhausen.
The botanist Robert Caspary was the first to make the claim that all pyramidal oaks in Central Europe descended from the beautiful oak. In 1873 he examined the oak very carefully and determined a trunk circumference of 3.05 meters at chest height . A little later, in 1875, the landscape gardener Eduard Petzold visited the Schöne Eiche and stated a circumference of ten feet (about 3.3 meters) by a meter.
Development to the present
As early as the 1770s, it is said to have lost an upper part of the crown due to lightning. In 1871 the beautiful oak was struck again by lightning and on July 27, 1928 it lost another part of its crown in a severe thunderstorm, which severely affected the perfect pyramid shape. A local reported:
“The lightning shattered her crown. A ruin, with withered foliage bent to one side in mourning, it stood there for a long time. "
The oak survived this event quite well. It regenerated and sprouted from the remaining side branches. In May 1959 it was placed under nature protection as a natural monument and renovated in 1978. The oak is in very good condition today, considering its age. The trunk has a few rotten spots and is partially hollow. The crown, which is partially secured by ropes, is sparse.
In 1990 the trunk was 1.3 meters high, 3.84 meters in circumference, 19 meters high and 9 meters in diameter. By 2000 the oak had a trunk circumference of 4.21 meters, measured at a height of one meter.
Offspring
Propagated vegetatively, the offspring basically retain their shape. Seedlings that have a columnar oak as their mother plant all show a more or less upright habit.
Since 1795 Reiser has been removed for refinement again and again , some of which were sold at a high price as a botanical rarity. The descendants of the beautiful oak can therefore no longer be completely surveyed. The royal houses and especially the Hessian landgraves, who gave the plants away as decorative trees for larger gardens, parks and avenues, played a major role in the spread of the seedlings and branches of the beautiful oak. Some of their offspring grow faster than the mother plant.
In Schwerz -Dammendorf in the Saalekreis ( Saxony-Anhalt ) there is a pyramid oak with an age of about 200 years. In 2006 it had a trunk circumference of 5.73 meters, measured at a height of one meter. The oldest known pyramid oak, derived from the beautiful oak, has been in Bergpark Wilhelmshöhe near Kassel since 1795 . It is a daughter plant obtained by grafting with a branch of the beautiful oak .
Today 126 varieties of pedunculate oak are known, of which about 35 show columnar growth, two of which are represented in the normal tree nursery trade . Since the end of the 18th century, many different growth forms of the Central European oak have been selected and propagated, including that of the beautiful oak. The peak of the oak selection took place in the middle of the 19th century. The varieties are divided into individual groups based on the same characteristics; those descending from the beautiful oak belong to the group of columnar oaks.
There are still two types of Fastigiata and Fastigiata Koster on the market . In the literature, the names Quercus robur var , Fastigiata Loud are used as varieties for the variety Fastigiata . or more rarely than the form Quercus robur f. to find fastigiata . Since the seedlings of these columnar oaks are different, the trees offered today under the name Fastigiata are likely to be a whole group of 'Fastigiata' varieties. The Fastigiata Koster variety , a seedling of Fastigiata , grows even slimmer and more upright.
Stories and legends
The beautiful oak used to be worshiped as a miracle tree. Pilgrims who were on their way to Walldürn stopped under her and cut pieces of bark from the trunk, which were said to have healing powers. There have been repeated attempts to explain the unusual growth form in the past. For example, the bishop of Mainz is said to have lost his monstrance while hunting near the beautiful oak . It fell on the still young oak and then grew into the trunk. This is said to have been the cause of the oak's unusual growth.
Another legend about the beautiful oak has survived since around 1800 to this day. According to this, the vertical growth of the shoots would come from the location on a filled well shaft. The roots of the oak would have too little space in this and grow downwards. The crown has developed in the same way as the roots.
A poem was dedicated to the beautiful oak by an unknown author. According to the first written tradition:
"But you, dear tree, thou sole and ornament your area,
green even centuries standing and
back to the highest oak aged
That admiring the grandson see even you
if you kindly speak to him, I am -
I, the here many times some Posterity saw,
I'm still there for you as well as for them.
I am always happy to see you!
May your sight be blessed, friend, also for me! '"
See also
literature
- Bernd Ullrich, Stefan Kühn, Uwe Kühn: Our 500 oldest trees: Exclusively from the German Tree Archives . BLV Buchverlag GmbH & Co. KG, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-8354-0376-5 , p. 154 .
- Caspary, Robert (1873): About some varieties that arose in the middle of the distribution area: The snake spruce Picea excelsa Lk. Var. Virgata , pyramidal oak Quercus pedunculata W. var. Fastigiata Loud. and other. Schr. Physik.-Ökon. Society zu Königsberg 1873: pp. 115-136.
- Johann Christoph Stockhausen : The beautiful oak . In: Hanauisches Magazin 1781 (4): pp. 161–164.
- Hans Joachim Fröhlich : Paths to old trees - Volume 1, Hessen. Widi-Druck, Offenbach 1990, pp. 26-28 and 148, ISBN 3-926181-06-0 .
- Hans Joachim Fröhlich: Old lovable trees in Germany. Cornelia Ahlering Verlag, Buchholz 2000, p. 178, ISBN 3-926600-05-5 .
- Eike Jablonski (2006): European oak varieties - varieties, collectors and collections . Communications from the German Dendrological Society 91: 103-126.
- Stefan Kühn, Bernd Ullrich, Uwe Kühn: Germany's old trees. Fifth, expanded edition, BLV Buchverlag GmbH & Co. KG, Munich 2007, p. 76, ISBN 978-3-8354-0183-9 .
- Uwe Kühn, Stefan Kühn, Bernd Ullrich: Trees that tell stories. BLV Buchverlag GmbH & Co. KG, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-405-16767-1 .
- Georg Wittenberger: The miracle tree from Harreshausen "The beautiful oak". Ed .: vom Heimat- und Geschichtsverein, Babenhausen 2005.
Web links
- The beautiful oak at odenwald-ausflug.de
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c Uwe Kühn, Stefan Kühn, Bernd Ullrich: Trees that tell stories . S. 137. See also: Literature.
- ↑ a b c Hans-Peter Ebert: The treatment of frequently occurring tree species . Rottenburg 2003, p. 148.
- ↑ a b c Hans Joachim Fröhlich: Old lovable trees in Germany . S. 178. See also: Literature.
- ^ Johann Wilhelm Christian Steiner: Third part: History of the city of Dieburg and topography of the former centers Umstadt, Babenhausen and Dieburg . In: Antiquities and history of the Bachgau in the old Maingau , Darmstadt 1829, p. 138
- ↑ a b c d Uwe Kühn, Stefan Kühn, Bernd Ullrich: Trees that tell stories . S. 138. See also: Literature.
- ↑ Stefan Kühn, Bernd Ullrich, Uwe Kühn: Germany's old trees . P. 76. See also: Literature.
