The Sweet Chestnut of Modern One

This sweet chestnut is dated by the building beside it. The City of Edinburgh Council, which put it on its heritage tree list, calls it contemporary with the gallery that is now Modern One, the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, and so roughly 150 years old. That is the council's own reasoning, not a planting record. Read it as somewhere between 140 and 170 years rather than a date anybody wrote down. What the council singles out is the trunk. It is one large, single stem growing close to the south-east corner of the building, and its bark runs in the long ridges that twist round an older sweet chestnut like the thread of a screw. Most of the tree's neighbours on these lawns are grand in the ordinary way, mature beech, Turkey oak and lime. This one is the trunk that looks wrung out. Come in July. Sweet chestnut flowers late, long after most trees in the city have finished, and the council notes this one hung with catkins in high summer. In October the spiny burs follow. The council list is the only source we have for this tree, and it is some years old. The grounds are free. If you walk round to that corner and find the chestnut still standing, or gone, tell us.