The Volksgarten Plane of Muhlgasse

A dated photograph on Wikimedia Commons, filed under this exact tree's own protection number, shows this plane still standing in the Volksgarten years after its formal designation, one of the small proofs this project prefers over a bare database record. It is a London Plane, the hybrid city planners across Europe reach for when they want a tree that shrugs off pollution and poor soil, and this one has done the job here since the year 2000. It grows a few paces from a protected oak and a second protected plane, the three of them forming Graz's tightest cluster of designated trees, all reachable inside one small public park. Neither source gives an age or a trunk measurement, an honest gap on a tree old enough to have earned legal protection on its own merits. The Volksgarten opens on every side with no fee and no closing time, a five minute walk from Graz's main railway station.