The Hawthorn of Nordpolen

A school and a diabetes centre were planned for this corner of Nørrebro, and the plans were paused to keep the green ground, and this hawthorn on it, intact. The register's own note records the pause as of August 2018. What the campaigners were defending is a remnant. Nordpolen is one of the last surviving pieces of the old common, the overdrev, that lay here before Nørrebro was built across it, so the hawthorn belongs to the ground rather than to anybody's planting plan. Red Byens Træer, a local blog that has gone through this quarter tree by tree, calls it the magical white hawthorn, older than Nørrebro itself. The register puts it at 2.21 metres round and 8.5 metres tall and describes its form as twisted and stunted, which is what a hedgerow survivor looks like standing next to a planted specimen. It is a small tree by the standards of this list and it has outlasted everything around it, which is the whole point of it. The hospital campus of De Gamles By sits on one side and Tagensvej runs on the other. Nobody has dated it, and nobody has settled which hawthorn it is. The register files it as Crataegus sp. and leaves the species open. If you know which one it is, tell us.