One of Canterbury's oddest trees is a street tree, standing on the pavement of Old Dover Road next to a bus stop. Most people who pass it are waiting for the bus. It is one of the city's seven baobab planes, named for trunks that swell outward like the African tree. What exactly it is remains disputed. The city's archaeological society first called the set Oriental Planes, and the plaque on the cathedral's tree still does. In 2014 the Natural History Museum's identification service concluded they are a clone of the London Plane with a viral infection. Both names circulate. Nobody has found a record of the planting. KentOnline says the baobab planes went in more than 150 years ago, and a tree blog that went looking for all seven places them in the middle of the 19th century. Both are estimates. The pin is placed near Vernon Place, so look along that stretch for the bus stop and the swollen trunk beside it. The last published accounts of it standing date from 2019 and the society's current pages; tell us if you find it changed. It is about ten minutes on foot from Canterbury East.
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Getting there
Old Dover Road near Vernon Place, Canterbury CT1 3HG
You can recognise it by the swollen, bulging trunk on the public footway. It stands next to the bus stop on Old Dover Road, a short walk from Vernon Place.
Old Dover Road bus stop at the tree; about 10 minutes' walk from Canterbury East station.
The line is our estimate of how much there is to see, not a measurement. Typical for this species where this tree stands; exact weeks shift with the year.
Sources
Where the facts on this page come from. The story was written with AI from these sources, and readers who know the tree correct it.
