The Vondelpark Poplar

One of the tallest trees in Amsterdam stands on the edge of a bicycle path, not in a forest. Sources disagree on exactly when this Canadian poplar went into the ground, sometime between the park's founding around 1870 and a specifically documented 1885, but either way it has reached roughly 38.5 meters, taller than most buildings in the surrounding Oud-Zuid neighborhood. Its trunk measures 617 centimeters around, the third thickest in the city behind only the two plane trees in Leidsebosje. Poplars grow fast and die relatively young for a tree, rarely making it past 150 years, so this one is closer to the end of its run than the beginning, and unlike an oak it will not get centuries more to look forward to. Vondelpark's own written guide to its old trees singles this poplar out specifically, distinguishing it from an ash of similar age elsewhere in the park that never got nearly as large. Whether anything in the city stands taller is an open question: the elm at the Oudemanhuispoort is the usual rival and we have found no measurement of it we trust, so if you know one, tell us. Cyclists and joggers pass beneath this crown on Van Eeghenlaan every day without registering that one of the tallest trees in a city of canals and gabled houses is a poplar nobody planted to be a landmark.