Erskine House Tree

This plane is said to descend from the tree Hippocrates taught under on Kos. In the late 1960s a Greek kidney doctor at Belfast City Hospital, Dimitrios Oreopoulos, had seeds of the Plane Tree of Kos planted around the hospital, and Queen's University dates the gift to 1966. Years later three survivors were found. This is the one on the lawn behind Erskine House, then the nurses' home, where a steel plaque was unveiled on 30 January 1987. The lineage is the hospital's tradition. Nobody has tested the tree's parentage, so take the line back to Kos as a story the hospital tells, not a proven fact. What is documented is the affection. In 2017 Northern Ireland voted this the Tree of the Year, and a circular bench and a second plaque for Oreopoulos have since joined it. It is not old. At something under sixty years it is a young tree, and it is on this map for its story, not its age. No girth or height has been published. Two honest caveats. It stands in hospital grounds, and we have not confirmed that the lawn is open to anyone who walks in, though the bench was put there for visitors, staff and students. And our pin is approximate. The last dated report of the tree is from 2024, so if you have seen it lately, tell us.