The Plane Tree of Weg op den Heuvel

The water this plane tree was planted beside is gone. The Ameide, a branch of the river Aa, ran along here between shored banks. It has since been built over, and the tree now stands on a strip of municipal grass beside Helmond's Stadskantoor. Only one source describes this specimen: the Dutch national register of monumental trees. It is an official one, but it is still a single voice, and its account of the tree argues with itself. The planting band it records is 1830 to 1840, which is where the age on this page comes from. Its history note ties the tree instead to the house of the physician Holtus, which stood next to it and dates from around 1870. A generation apart, and nobody has settled it. What the register is unambiguous about is the shape. Meerstammig, it says: multi-stemmed. This is not a single column but several trunks leaving the ground together. London plane is itself a hybrid, an accidental cross between the oriental and the American plane that turned out to shrug off soot, salt and hard pruning. Nineteenth century Europe planted it along everything for exactly that reason. The reward for the pedestrian is the bark, which sheds in irregular plates and leaves the trunk in patches of cream, olive and grey. The house is still there. The river is not.