The Plane of Frederikspark

Five and a half metres around the trunk and twenty four metres up, on a scrap of green between a busy junction and the Houtplein bus stops. A professional tree care firm measured this plane at 175 centimetres of stem diameter, which is where that girth figure comes from, and the national register dates the planting to between 1860 and 1870, so roughly 155 to 165 years. It was here long before the traffic was. London plane is the tree cities keep when they keep nothing else, and this one shows why. It takes exhaust, compacted soil, hard pruning and root damage and carries on. Rather than trying to breathe through a century of grime it sheds its bark in plates, which is why the trunk is mottled cream, olive and grey instead of uniformly filthy. The species is a hybrid, an accident between the American and the oriental plane that turned up in Europe in the seventeenth century and turned out to be tougher than either parent. Stand under it in winter and the frame reads clearly: a short heavy bole, then limbs going out almost horizontally before they turn up, with bobbled seed balls hanging on long strings until spring. Two independent sources agree on this tree, which makes it the best documented entry in the Frederikspark and the easiest one to find.