The Old Lady of the Forest

The trunk you are looking at carries on about two metres below your feet. When the Amsterdamse Bos was built the ground level here was raised, and the soil around this chestnut was banked up carefully, with rubble, rather than replaced. She is called De Oude Dame van het Bos, the old lady of the forest, and she has the better claim to the ground than the forest does. The register records her planting in 1895; work on the Bos only began in 1928. In her first decades she stood in the Rietwijkeroordpolder, beside a farmhouse, in a landscape that no longer exists in any form. The polder went under the trees, the farm was pulled down, and the horse chestnut was left standing where it was, with its feet buried. The years show on her. The register notes a possible bleeding canker on the heavy northwest limb and at the trunk itself, and a large torsion crack running through a damaged branch on the north side. It also notes that she comes into full leaf and is otherwise in good heart. In May the candles go up, white with a red fleck at the throat, and by October there are conkers in the grass. Find her at the western edge of the Grote Speelweide in Amstelveen, at the treeline near the canoe hire. Only the national register describes this one, so if you know more, tell us.