The Marshaven Poplar

A Canadian poplar is a crop. The hybrid went into Dutch ground by the million for matchwood, clogs and pulp, and the usual arrangement is that it comes down at thirty or forty years, before the timber loses value and the limbs start letting go. This one was planted around 1900 to 1910 and nobody has taken it out. It stands on the peninsula at the Marshaven, where the harbour meets the IJssel. The national register looks at that position and wonders aloud whether Rijkswaterstaat, the state water authority, put it there on purpose as a marker for the harbour mouth. No document says so. It is a reasonable guess about a plausible tree in a plausible place, and it stays a guess. The years do show. On 18 January 2018 a large limb came away, which is what a poplar of this age does; the register noted it and did not treat it as the beginning of the end. The tree is still standing. What you get is more than a century of a species almost nobody lets grow old, on open ground beside a working river harbour with the barge traffic going by. And on a windy day the leaves do what poplar leaves do, which is most of the reason to stand under one.