The Silver Maple of the Weizigtpark

It was standing in a field for half a century before anyone made a park around it. The Weizigtpark grew out of the country estate of the same name, but the corner this maple occupies was not part of the designed grounds at all. It was grazing land, and it was only laid out as park in about 1947. The register bands the tree 1890 to 1900, which puts it in the meadow, decades ahead of the paths and the planting. That explains its shape if you look. A tree that grows up in open ground with nothing crowding it spreads low and wide and keeps its bottom branches, while a tree grown in a plantation is drawn up tall with a narrow crown and a clean trunk. The old meadow trees in a Dutch park are usually the broad ones. Silver maple is worth knowing for two things. The leaf is cut into five narrow lobes and is bright white underneath, so the whole crown flickers pale in wind. And it flowers in March, before any leaf, in small red and yellow tufts directly on the bare twigs, weeks before anything else in the park does anything at all.