The Steenenkamer Maple

One of the thickest maples in the Netherlands has two trunks instead of one. It stands on the Bolwerksweg outside Deventer, past the Bolwerksmolen windmill, where the lane runs out onto the floodplain of the IJssel, and it divides low into a double stem carrying a crown far wider than the road it shades. The national tree foundation lists it among the ten most remarkable trees in the province of Overijssel. It went into the ground somewhere between 1880 and 1890, which puts it at roughly 140 years, young for a tree on a list like this. Almost all of that life has been spent on ground the river takes back whenever the water comes up, which is not where you would expect to find a maple of this size. Deventer's own tree society had the crown pruned back not long ago, the sort of attention a tree gets once a town has decided to keep it. It grows in a private garden. Its own record says it is clearly visible from the Bolwerksweg, and the roadside is where you stand: there is no way onto the land and no need for one. Nobody has published a girth for it, so how thick it actually is remains an open question. If you go out there with a tape measure, tell us the number.