The Canadian Poplar of Eric Sasselaan

At 35 metres, this Canadian poplar is among the tallest trees recorded anywhere in Antwerp, its trunk clear of branches for a full 6 metres before the crown even begins, a shape that comes from growing hard and fast for light rather than from any deliberate pruning. Measured at 5.40 metres around in 2011, it stands beside a bridge on Eric Sasselaan, an ordinary stretch of the city with nothing else to recommend it as a destination, and that is exactly the point. This is not a castle park or a botanic garden specimen but a street tree that simply grew bigger and faster than anyone expected a hybrid poplar to. Canadian poplar is a fast growing hybrid, not a long lived species by any measure, typically reaching its full size within decades rather than centuries, which makes its scale here more a demonstration of what the species can do under good conditions than a claim to great age. It is a reminder that not every remarkable tree in a city has a noble family or a monastery behind it. Some are simply the biggest thing of their kind that a stretch of unremarkable pavement happened to grow.