The Kartaus Plane

At 38 metres this London plane is the tallest protected tree in Freiburg, by a margin nobody has bothered to measure the runner up against. It grows at the edge of the Kartause, a former Carthusian monastery in the Waldsee district whose garden still keeps the shape of the order that built it: a walled, cultivated plot, tended rather than left to itself, which is likely part of why a plane tree here had the room and the care to run this tall. Planes tolerate poor soil and pollution better than almost any other species, which is why cities plant them along roads and squares; this one had a monastery garden instead, and used the advantage. The garden keeps limited public hours, open for casual visiting on Friday afternoons from three to six without booking, and by arranged tour at other times, so this is not a tree to detour past on a whim. The tree itself is visible from Kartauserstrasse regardless. Nobody has recorded its age or the size of its trunk. A tree this tall on grounds this settled could plausibly be read either way, decades or a century plus, and without a plaque or a girth measurement we would rather leave the number blank than guess at it.