The Plane of the Alkmaarderhout

The city decided to plant this wood in 1607, which makes it older than most of what Europeans think of as parks. What followed was not peaceful. Part of the Hout was cut down again during the siege of Alkmaar in 1672, the disaster year, when the Dutch Republic was attacked from three sides at once and a besieged town needed wood far more than it needed shade. From the middle of the eighteenth century there are winding rococo lanes, which are still traceable. Most of the trees standing here now are twentieth century, from when Leonard Springer made a design for the whole wood and the deer park was built. This plane, banded 1850 to 1860, is older than that and is now the oldest tree in the Alkmaarderhout, a position it inherited last summer. The beech that held it, nearly seven metres round, came down in the Poly storm of 2023. It stands between the flower clock and the music garden on the Wilhelminalaan. Bark flaking in cream and olive, big lobed leaves, and hard spiky seed balls hanging on their stalks through the winter.