and the trees, too

The Arboretum is more than a collection of trees—it is a living library whose every leaf tells a story. When we wander its narrow side-trails (the German "Trampelpfade") we step off the map and into a quieter grammar of green. English, as a global lingua franca, is the natural tongue for sharing these discoveries with the widest circle of readers: the etymology of scientific names, the folklore of oaks, the carbon-math of a single beech. Below are field-notes written in English so that they may travel as freely as seeds on the wind.

1. A Ginkgo’s Time-Stamp
Ginkgo biloba is often called a "living fossil", but the phrase is too tidy. Stand beneath the arboretum’s oldest specimen and you stand under a tree that saw the Ming dynasty, two world wars, and the invention of the internet. Count the fan-shaped leaves scattered on the path: each vein is a barcode for 200 million years.

2. The Secret Life of Leaf Litter
Kick aside the brown carpet on a Trampelpfad and you release a plume of fungal spores. Under a hand-lens the litter becomes a city: springtails commute, slime-molds solve mazes, and mycorrhizal threads trade phosphorus for sugar. One handful holds more transactions than the Frankfurt Stock Exchange in a day.

3. Why Latin Still Matters
English may be the vehicle, but Latin is the chassis. Acer platanoides sounds aristocratic because it is: "maple resembling the plane tree". Learning the binomials is like learning the chords to every song the forest sings. Once you know them, common names feel like nicknames—endearing but imprecise.

4. The Carbon Ledger of a Beech
A mature European beech (Fagus sylvatica) locks away roughly 4.7 t of CO₂ in its trunk, branches and roots. If the arboretum’s champion beech were a bank, its fixed-carbon savings would equal the yearly emissions of 25 average German cars. Climate action can begin with not cutting down what already exists.

5. Trail Etiquette for the Silent Visitor
Trampelpfade are unofficial for a reason: they compress root zones and erode lichens. Stick to the narrow line, give way to beetles, and never pick a specimen—photography is the only sustainable harvest. Leave footprints that forget themselves by the next rainfall.

6. From Acorn to Ink
Oak galls, the round growths triggered by wasp larvae, once fed Europe’s scriptoria. Iron-gall ink wrote Magna Carta and Bach’s scores. Crush a gall in the field and you’ll stain your fingers sepia; imagine those stains as the first draft of every book in your local library.

7. Listening to Wood
Press your ear to the trunk of a Scots pine on a windy day. The wood conducts vibration like a natural stethoscope. What you hear is not wind but resonance: the tree turning air into music the way a cello turns horsehair into Bach. Close your eyes and you become the soundboard.

8. The Future Seed Bank
Hidden behind the visitor center is a small refrigerated room: the arboretum’s seed bank. Each envelope holds potential forests. Climate models predict that by 2080 today’s native range for European beech will shift 150 km north-east. These seeds are insurance against a map we may no longer recognize.

9. A Quick Field Lexicon
- Lammas shoot: the late-summer growth spurt that looks like a second spring.
- Mast year: when oaks synchronize a glut of acorns to overwhelm predators.
- Crown shyness: the polite gaps between mature canopies that create living jigsaw puzzles.

10. Take-Home Question
If a tree falls in the arboretum and no one hears it, did it feed the soil? Answer: yes—through a lattice of fungi that trade the news of its death for nutrients, proving that communication needs no words, only connection.