The Robinia of Kasteel Doorwerth

A black locust normally carries a feathery leaf made of a dozen small leaflets. This one carries a single blade, a rare cultivar called Unifoliola, and it is held locally to be the oldest black locust in the Netherlands. Its date is genuinely disputed. The castle's own account and the Dutch tree register both say 1678: three robinias planted on the forecourt by Anton I van Aldenburg, count of Doorwerth, to mark the Peace of Nijmegen, two of them felled in the 1880s and this one not. The plaque at the tree tells a different story, crediting the Frenchman Pierre Robin with bringing the species over from the eastern United States and putting this one in around 1601, and a date of 1579 circulates as well. By the better sourced version it is about 350 years old. By the plaque it would be older still, and nobody has settled it. What is not disputed is what it has come through. Kasteel Doorwerth, a moated medieval castle, was wrecked in the Second World War and rebuilt around it. The tree stayed where it was, and has had its crown taken back three times since, in 1965, 2010 and 2016, to keep the weight off an old frame. The inner courtyard where it grows is free to walk into. Only the house itself costs money.