Single‐crystal germanium on (11¯02) sapphire films are grown after a substrate preanneal of 1400 °C and at growth temperatures above 700 °C. At a growth temperature of 800 °C, the nucleation site density was ∼1011cm−2. For thin germanium films, the isolated islands were singly oriented, with single‐crystal films obtained for thicker grown films. A 400 °C growth temperature on sapphire was insufficiently high to get epitaxial growth and produced polycrystallites. Growth at 400 °C on an 800 °C grown germanium template did result in epitaxy. However, a high fraction of the twinned orientation was produced, resulting in a bicrystalline film.