The Plane Tree of Krasi

The trunk measures roughly 24 metres around, which is among the largest recorded for a plane tree in Europe. Local practice turns that number straight into an age: each metre of perimeter is said to stand for a century, so the village puts the tree at 2,400 years. That is arithmetic performed on a tape measure rather than evidence about the tree, and it is worth saying why the sum is unsafe here in particular. Oriental planes regenerate from the root. A stool this size can be many centuries of renewal rather than one stem that has lived continuously since antiquity, so a vast perimeter is not the same thing as a vast age. Nobody has dated this one. If you know of a study that has, tell us. What the tree unarguably is: the centre of Krasi, a village 600 metres up on the road from Malia toward the Lasithi plateau. It grows in the Megali Vrisi square beside a stone fountain that still runs all year, and the tavernas put their tables under the canopy, so the square works as a room with a roof rather than a monument behind a rope. Sources report it as a proclaimed monument of nature; the declaring instrument itself was not traced. In a Cretan July, the shade is the whole argument.