The Plane of the Bonifatius Park

A London plane in a Drenthe village is a stranger, and that is the interesting part. The species is the definitive city tree of northern Europe, planted by the hundred thousand along boulevards from London to Vienna because it survives paving, pollution, root damage and hard pruning better than anything of its size. What it is not is a village tree. Out here, in a small park behind a parish centre on the German border, there is nothing for it to tolerate. So it has simply grown, in good soil, unpruned, with room. That produces a shape most people never see on a plane: broad rather than columnar, low branching, and far wider than a street specimen of the same age. It is banded 1860 to 1870, and it stands with the copper beech in the park laid out at the old presbytery, of whose church only the tower survives. The bark is the giveaway from any distance, flaking away in irregular plates to leave a mottle of cream, olive and grey. On an unpolluted country tree the pale patches stay paler, so it is a brighter thing here than in any city.