The Wagnerlaan Poplar

The national register calls this a Chinese poplar and then stops, which leaves a monumental tree whose species nobody has actually pinned down. Several different poplars are grown in the Netherlands under that name, and no source we can find says which one is standing on Wagnerlaan. If you know poplars, this is a question you could settle from the pavement, and we would like you to. The rest is on record. Planted between 1900 and 1910, owned by the city, growing in a plantsoen, a strip of public green, diagonally opposite the Rijnstate hospital. Under history the register has written nothing. A poplar reaching 120 years is worth noticing on its own terms. The genus is known for growing fast and dying young, and municipal tree departments across Europe have spent decades taking ageing poplars down as a safety matter, which makes an official monumental designation for one of them unusual rather than routine. It stands about seventy metres from the Cattenpoelseweg oak, so the two are one stop rather than two, on a residential corner nobody comes to Arnhem for. That is a good part of the appeal. This is a tree on the way to the shops that has quietly outlived everybody who planted it. The register is our only source. Tell us what it is and we will name it properly.