The Caucasian Wingnut of Statenbolwerk

This Caucasian wingnut grows in the garden of a private villa at Statenbolwerk 1, and the honest way to see it is from the footpath outside rather than at the trunk: the Dutch national monumental-tree register lists it as visible from public ground even though the ground it stands on is not. Pterocarya fraxinifolia comes from forests around the Caucasus and the southern shore of the Caspian, a relative of walnut grown for its long hanging chains of winged seeds rather than for timber, and it took root here in the first decade of the twentieth century, once Statenbolwerk's grand villas had already gone up along the old fortification walk Zocher laid out in 1828. At around 120 years old it is one of the younger trees on this page, but wingnuts grow fast and wide, and this one has had a private garden's room to do it without a park's usual crowding. What a visitor gets is a view rather than a walk-up: stand on the Statenbolwerk path and the crown shows above the villa's hedge, part of the same short stretch of park that already holds two more of this page's newest trees, the oak pair and the beech ensemble, both properly on public ground a few dozen metres away.