Wer kratzt denn da? - Wissenswertes über die Buche und wie man mit einem Baum telefonieren kann

Experience station on the nature experience trail on Lügder Schildberg

If you look around the forest here, you will recognize many different tree species that can be easily distinguished from each other by their leaves and bark. A particularly large number of beech trees grow here in the forest on the Schildberg. You can recognize the beech trees by their smooth, silver-grey bark and their seeds, the beechnuts. These are ripe in September and are particularly popular with birds, wild boar and rodents. Just try a beechnut yourself, you're sure to like it. (Just don't eat too much or you could get a stomach ache.) In autumn, you can also recognize beeches by the fact that they shed a lot of leaves. Around 800,000 leaves grow on a beech tree. Would you have guessed that?

Did you know? A beech tree can grow up to 40 meters high and live up to 400 years. The tree not only grows in height, it also gets thicker. Every year it forms a new growth ring, consisting of the light spring wood and the dark summer wood. If you want to know how old a felled tree is, you can count it using the annual rings.

It is astonishing that a beech tree can have a total root length of over 23 kilometers. The roots give the tree stability so that it doesn't topple over. The tree also absorbs water from the ground via the roots. The trunk guides the water upwards into the branches and leaves. But the trunk not only conducts water. It can also transmit sounds wonderfully. This property is also used by the animals in the forest. The woodpecker hears the grubs in the wood and the squirrel hears an attacker through the scratching noises of its claws on the tree.

Try it out for yourself on our tree phone: put your ear to one side of the trunk and have a second person tap or scratch at the other end. You will be surprised how clearly you can hear the sounds.
If you look closely, you will notice that our tree telephone is not a beech tree. The trunk is also gray, but not as smooth as a beech, it is the trunk of a larch.