The Plane of Hekellaan

Boom en Bosch, the local tree-protection group, calls this the largest and perhaps the most beautiful plane tree in the city. They are right about the second half and out by a few hundred metres on the first, because a thicker plane stands at Sint Janskerkhof and the register's tape says so. The two sources also disagree about its age. Boom en Bosch estimates around 150 years, the municipality records 120, neither has a ring count behind it, so the entry here carries the whole range instead of picking a winner. What nobody disputes is the trunk: 4.8 metres round, at the park entrance on Hekellaan along the southern edge of the old fortifications. Plane was the standard 19th-century choice for exactly this position, tolerant of compacted soil, city air and roots being dug through, which is why Dutch park gates are full of them and why the oldest ones tend to stand where a bastion was flattened. The register grades its vitality as normal, the best it gives. It is the only plane at this entrance and unmistakably the heaviest trunk here; the nearest tree of comparable bulk is a horse chestnut some forty metres off, a different species with a different bark entirely.