The Black Locust of Lindevangsparken

Something took a large piece of bark off the south side of this tree and it carried on growing. The wound is the first thing the register records about it after the measurements, and the measurements are 2.92 metres round and 21.5 metres tall, on one stem, in the southeastern corner of Lindevangsparken. That height is the interesting part. Robinia pseudoacacia is an American tree, from the Appalachians, planted across Europe for centuries because its timber resists rot in the ground, and in a park it often ends up as a leaning, suckering, many-stemmed thing. This one went straight up instead and kept a single trunk while doing it. The giveaways are all at eye level and above: bark furrowed into deep ropes, pairs of short spines at the base of the twigs, leaves divided into rows of small oval leaflets, and hanging clusters of white pea flowers in early summer that smell strongly enough to find the tree by. Only the register carries it. The position and condition were checked in June 2023, the tree was recorded alive, and nobody has dated it, so no age is offered here. Lindevangsparken is free and open, five to ten minutes from Peter Bangs Vej metro.