The Silver Maple of the Molenstraat Cemetery

The register thinks this tree is as old as the ground it stands on, and it hedges the claim rather than making it. Its note reads: probably planted around 1880 at the opening of the cemetery. That is a guess admitting it is a guess, which is worth more than a confident date. The Molenstraat cemetery was founded in 1880 as an expansion of an older Catholic burial ground, laid out with a central path and a Calvary mount, and the maple's planting band of 1880 to 1890 sits across that opening. A tree put in at a cemetery's founding has a job to do: it is there to be the thing that is already large when the first mourners arrive. Silver maple is North American and grows fast, which is how it got into so many nineteenth century plantings on this side of the Atlantic. The bark breaks into long shaggy plates with age. The leaf is cut into five narrow lobes and is silver-white underneath, so the whole crown flickers pale whenever there is wind. One thing to expect on arrival: the register logs this entry as two trees rather than one, so look for a pair. The other silver maple on this page stands in the castle park across town, banded 1890 to 1900. This is the older of the two.