The Schillerplatz Plane

A photograph taken on the second of May, 2014, and filed on Wikimedia Commons under this tree's own protection number, is the kind of small dated proof this project values: it shows the tree alive and identifiable twelve years ago, a data point independent of both the city's live register and Wikipedia's own list, which agree with each other on the exact spot to within two metres. The plane has held its Naturdenkmal status since September 1990, growing on Schillerplatz, an ordinary public square in the St. Leonhard district rather than a landscaped park, the kind of protected tree that people cross without a second glance because nothing marks it out from the street furniture around it. No age or trunk measurement has ever been published for it, which is true of most of Graz's protected trees and no reason to hold this one back: it stands on open public ground, reachable by tram or bus directly to the square, free at any hour.