The Hawthorn of Nordpolen

Neighbours in Norrebro took on a building project to protect a crooked hawthorn, and as of August 2018 the plans were paused. What they were defending is 2.21 metres round and 8.5 metres tall, which is a considerable hawthorn, growing in the corner of De Gamles By that people here call Nordpolen, the North Pole: a scrap of rough ground left deliberately wild. The Danish Tree Register and the neighbourhood blog Red Byens Traeer agree on why it matters. This is a survivor of the old overdrev, the common grazing land that covered this ground before the streets around it existed. The blog, which calls it the magical white hawthorn, puts it as older than Norrebro itself. The shape of the tree supports the claim: the register records it as gnarled and twisted, which is what a hawthorn becomes after decades of browsing animals and open weather, not the outline of something a gardener planted. Nobody has dated it, and nobody has settled which hawthorn it is either. The register lists it as Crataegus with the species left open, an unusual admission in a country that measures its trees closely. If you know either answer, tell us. Come in late May and the whole low crown goes white, which is how the blog came to name it.