The Ferry Landing Plane

Three of Pfaueninsel's protected oaks require a ferry ticket. This plane tree does not. Berlin's Naturdenkmal register lists it at Pfaueninselchaussee 100, the address of the Wirtshaus zur Pfaueninsel, the old inn that has stood at the mainland ferry dock since long before the chain ferry became the island's only public access. The oaks across the water needed the eighteenth century royal garden that grew up around them to survive this long; this plane needed nothing more than the road leading to the crossing point, protected for its beauty and its tie to the place rather than for age or rarity, the reason the district gives on its own designation record. No planting date survives, and no second source beyond the government ordinance has turned up despite real searching, an honest gap rather than an invented history. What makes it worth including anyway is the position: anyone heading for the Pfaueninsel oaks passes directly beside it, on the free side of the water, before they have paid for anything at all. See this one on the way in, whether or not the ferry crossing that follows fits the day.