Cathedral Precincts Baobab Plane

The plaque on this plane names a date and a nurseryman, and the evidence behind it may be a website. It says the tree is an Oriental plane, supplied in the 1820s by William Masters, a Canterbury nurseryman who lived from 1796 to 1874. The Cathedral Archive credits Masters with planting it, according to KentOnline. But a member of the city's archaeological society has said the plaque's wording rests on text from the society's own website rather than on any archive record. So the 1820s date is a claim, not a fact. KentOnline puts the baobab planes at more than 150 years old and one tree blog suggests the middle of the 19th century. The species is contested too. The plaque says Oriental; the Natural History Museum's identification service, consulted in 2014, concluded that Canterbury's swollen planes are a clone of the London Plane carrying a viral infection. Whatever its name, the trunk explains the nickname, swollen and bulging like a baobab's. It stands in the cathedral precincts just outside the Memorial Garden, near the Son of Man statue, one of seven such planes scattered across the city. The precincts are ticketed, so check the cathedral's current terms before you go. It is about twelve minutes on foot from either station.