The Tulip Tree of Angerenstein

In December 2010 a local history group put a tape around this tulip tree at chest height and read 5.39 metres, then measured it at 37.5 metres tall. On their reckoning that made it one of the largest tulip trees in the Netherlands and possibly the fourth-thickest in Europe. It had put on about three centimetres of girth in the previous year alone, so whatever those numbers are today, they are larger. Thirty-seven and a half metres is exceptional for the species anywhere outside its native eastern North America. The national register dates the planting to between 1810 and 1820, which fits the roughly two hundred years the measurers estimated at the time and puts the tree in the park in front of Huis Angerenstein while the place was still a private estate. Tulip trees earn a detour twice a year. The flowers are genuinely tulip-shaped, green with an orange band inside, and on a tree this tall most of them are out of reach of the eye. The autumn is not. The whole crown turns a clear butter yellow and holds it for weeks. Park Angerenstein has been open to the public since 1921 and municipally owned since 1941. It costs nothing, and of the four monumental trees standing within a hundred metres of each other here, this is the one to walk to first.