Plants that need bare sand
Dry-ground species that are rare in wet central Europe.
Out at the western edge of Frankfurt, nine kilometres from the main square, is something nobody expects in a German banking city: a genuine inland sand dune. The sand was piled here about ten thousand years ago at the end of the last ice age, when wind lifted material out of the Rhine valley and dropped it on this bank. Inland dunes are rare across Europe, which is why the site was declared a nature reserve in nineteen eighty-four and added to the European Natura two thousand network in two thousand and three. The reserve covers roughly sixty hectares and supports plants and insects adapted to dry, nutrient-poor sand that live nowhere else in the region. The habitat is extremely fragile: one step off the path destroys a crust that takes years to grow back. For that reason a boardwalk of chestnut wood about four hundred metres long carries visitors across the middle of the dune and keeps feet off the sand entirely. The visit is short and quiet and is not a big tourist set piece. Tram line twelve runs to its last stop at Rheinlandstrasse and it is a walk of some five hundred metres from there. Late spring and early summer are the best of it, when the sand plants flower and the insect life is busy; in winter the whole thing looks washed out. Combine it with a walk in the nearby City Forest if you want the journey to earn its keep.
Dry-ground species that are rare in wet central Europe.
And in the European Natura two thousand network since two thousand and three.
Schwanheimer Bahnstrasse, 60529 Frankfurt am Main
On its own, no; the boardwalk takes twenty minutes and the reserve is small. It is well worth it combined with a walk in the City Forest or the old village core of Schwanheim, which together make a proper half day.
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