The Caucasian Wingnut of Vijverstraat

This wingnut carries its seeds in chains that can run half a metre long, dozens of winged nuts strung like beads down a single stalk. Pterocarya fraxinifolia is a Caucasian native in the same family as the walnut, and it shows: crush a leaf and the smell is unmistakably a walnut cousin's. It throws up multiple trunks from the base rather than one clean stem, which is normal for the species rather than damage, and it grows fast enough that a specimen planted in the late nineteenth century can already dwarf a chestnut planted the same decade. Breda has two of these registered within a kilometre of each other, this one on the Vijverstraat corner of Wilhelminapark, the other across town in Valkenberg beside the castle grounds. This is the more sheltered of the pair, tucked among the park's older plantings rather than standing in the open. The register bands its planting to 1890 to 1900, putting it past its first century. No girth has been recorded. Free, public park, open daily. Look for the seed chains from midsummer into autumn. Nothing else in a Dutch park hangs quite like this.