The Plane Tree of the Botterbrug

Nothing else on this stretch of the Oude Delft comes close: seen from above, the plane tree at the Botterbrug is one broad round crown spreading over the canal edge, the largest along the water here. It stands in a small municipal garden beside the former girls' orphanage at Oude Delft 116, and the national register of monumental trees lists it as open to visit and visible from the street. That register is also where its age comes from. It puts the planting somewhere between 1880 and 1890, which makes the tree about 140 years old, give or take a decade. It records nothing else: no story behind the planting, no name of whoever chose the spot, and no measurement of the trunk. What the tree has lived through is easier to say. It was already well grown when Delft was occupied in 1940, and it has watched well over a century of boats on the canal and walkers crossing the bridge. Like every London plane it sheds its bark in plates, so the trunk is a patchwork of grey, olive and cream. The register counts it as a single tree standing on its own rather than one of a row. Nobody has published its girth or its height. If you have put a tape measure round it, tell us.