The Plane Tree of St Anne's
over 150 yearsLondon Plane
Which one is it? Between pavilions V and C1, and obvious once you are in the right courtyard: nothing else on the campus comes close to a trunk of five and a half metres round.
The biggest tree on this walk is not in a park. It grows on the grounds of St Anne's University Hospital between pavilions V and C1, and the easiest way in is the gate on the south side off Hybešova. Nobody asks your business at a public teaching hospital, but this is a working campus rather than a public garden, so take it quietly. The plane repays the detour. Its trunk measures 565 to 575 centimetres round, the two figures a few years apart rather than two different trees, and it divides into several secondary stems about four metres up. Before the crown was cut back it spread close to 40 metres, measured in 2004. The hospital behind it went up between 1865 and 1868, a Neo-Renaissance design by the Viennese architect Theophil Hansen. Local sources suspect the tree was planted with the building, which would put it over 150 years old, but nobody has demonstrated that and the register carries no age at all, so treat the link as likely rather than settled. What is certain is that this crown has been the view from a great many hospital windows, in a city that has been sending its sick to this address for more than a century and a half.
The button above opens directions in your maps app. Roughly 15-20 minutes on foot from Brno hlavní nádraží (the main train station), or a short walk from the Mendlovo náměstí tram and bus interchange
- Species
- London Plane (Platanus x acerifolia)
- Age estimate
- over 150 years
- Location
- Grounds of St Anne's University Hospital (Fakultní nemocnice u sv. Anny), Pekařská, between pavilions V and C1 (Staré Brno)
- Access
- On the grounds of St Anne's University Hospital, a public teaching hospital, not a private clinic. Enter through the gate on the south side off Hybešova; the campus is open on foot during the day and nobody asks your business, but this is hospital ground rather than a park
- Getting there
- Roughly 15-20 minutes on foot from Brno hlavní nádraží (the main train station), or a short walk from the Mendlovo náměstí tram and bus interchange
Trees nearby
Ticking this one off, walks past several more, and your collection growing city by city: that is the Ancient Trees app.
Get the appThis page was researched from a distance. If you know this tree, you know things we do not: the species, the age, the size, whether the photo shows the right tree, or that it is gone. Every field on this page can be corrected.
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