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The Cosmic Photo Challenge: 3 Ways
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Tag: Exotenwald
The Woods Next to My Home
In 1871 a baron decided that he wanted a forest full of unusual trees so he started to plant trees not native to the area in his backyard. He didn’t just plant one tree of every kind but in groups of hundreds. In ten years he planted (or rather had planted) more than 12,000 trees on the grounds behind his castle in Weinheim an der Bergstraße, 1460 of the trees were sequoias. In 1955 the family sold the area to the State of Baden-Württemberg and the care of the “Exotic Forest” fell to official foresters. Today it is open woodland like any other public forest in Germany. Over the years more and more species were introduced and now more than 130 non-native species can be found species, most of them thriving in large groups.
Although I am most attracted to the sequoias other species have their charm like this American tulip tree. Information boards are displayed next to the paths.
Animals are few and far between because of the many visitors but one can get lucky.
Sometimes it’s hard to cross the path because of the amount of traffic. Heedful snails look left and right before they cross.
Occasionally though, one can meet a more threatening member of the animal population. This one was aggressively lunging at me:
Filtered Blue
The last few weeks (months?) the sky has been relentlessly blue. So we went for a walk in the Exotenwald in Weinheim rather than in the open where there is little protection of sun. Whenever we looked up – the sky was blue. Here we are looking up at one of the 60m tall sequoias which are about 150 years old.
Weekend Sky
I’m a fan of sequoias
These natives of the US west coast were planted about 150 years ago in Weinheim. The single specimen in the trial garden Hermannshof and in the forest arboretum Exotenwald there are about 50 of these giants left of about 150.
Linked to I’m a fan of … #60. More fanatical photos can be found here.
How tall will you grow?
In our local forest the sign posts direct you to the different exotic species found. Three sequoia varieties are there, the coast or California redwood (Küstenmammutbaum), the giant redwood (Riesenmammutbaum), and the sequioadendron giganteum (Urweltmammutbaum). One of the unique features of the Exotenwald Weinheim is that not only a few specimen were planted but whole hectares of one kind. When the arboretum was started around 1870 almost 1500 sequoias were planted, most of which survived and are now tall and majestic. With the exception of the Urweltmammutbaum, said to be a living fossil and only discovered in 1941 – but there are a few of those as well, planted in 2011 and apparently thriving.
Many of the paths are wide and well maintained, perfect for a stroll rather than a hike.
But it is fun to leave those and turn down (or up) narrower
and darker paths.
For Cee’s Which Way Photo Challenge. More photos of paths, ways, streets, avenues, or alleys can be found here.
A walk amongst the exotic
The Exotenwald in Weinheim (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exotenwald_Weinheim) is the local forest, just a few steps from the centre of town. It was established in the middle of the 19th century and it has many exotic trees – not planted as single individuals but in large groups over hectares of woodland. Since it is so close to town with unrestricted access it used to be my playground when I was little. I still like to go for walks there – the following photos were all taken on a single afternoon this summer.
This last photo is of the mausoleum in the corner of the park, just where the woodlands start. It’s the grave of the family von Berckheim, Freiherr Christian F.B. von Berckheim started the arboretum.
This is for Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: needs to have the letters O and U in the word.
The mouse ran up ad hoc
I have an ulterior motive with my 6 word musings this Saturday. I was walking in the woods yesterday when this little creature ran in front of me on the path. It was tiny, totally unperturbed, meeping in a high voice, and following ants on which it pounced and ate one after the other. I think it was either a wood mouse or a bank vole – but the size still puzzles me. Its body was just an inch long, the tail about another inch. Any of the animals I checked up on are normally bigger. Or was this a baby who was still learning to keep under cover and keep quite? I hope it learned fast. Anyway, if somebody knows for sure what I saw I’d appreciate to hear from you.
The area was a fairly well frequented part of a large arboretum with exotic trees from all over the world, beech varieties are also included, pretty close to a town, in southwest Germany (Weinheim an der Bergstraße). https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exotenwald
for: Six Word Saturday
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