De Reus van De Worp

The giant of De Worp is called that because of its size, and its size is what nearly got its age wrong. A poplar this big looks old. The register says it is not especially, and it makes the argument with a photograph. An image of the Lange Laan in the Ossenwaarde taken in 1917 shows this tree standing small and distant, clearly a young and relatively slight thing. That rules out the older datings the girth would suggest and supports a planting somewhere between 1900 and 1910. Which means a bit over a century has produced a tree people call a giant. That is what Canadian poplar does. It is a hybrid grown for speed, capable of several feet a year on wet ground, and this ground is as wet as it gets: the floodplain of the IJssel, flooded regularly, deep silt, and a water table close to the surface. The trade-off is that poplars go brittle and are usually removed before they reach this stage. Stand at the base and look up, then remember that everybody who ever posed under it in a photograph is gone and the tree is younger than most of them were.