The Variegated Cedar of the Julianalaan

In the Pacific Northwest this species reaches sixty metres and can live past a thousand years. This one stands on a square in a Helmond housing district, is about a century old, and is splashed with cream and gold. The register calls it a bonte reuzenlevensboom, a variegated giant arborvitae, and then stops. Which variegated form it is, it does not say, and no other source names one. Several are in cultivation and telling them apart takes somebody standing underneath with a key. If you know which this is, tell us. Variegation is not an advantage. Pale tissue carries less chlorophyll, so a variegated plant grows slower than its plain green parent and holds its place in a planting purely because somebody liked the look of it. Getting to a hundred years with that handicap, on a public square rather than in a sheltered garden, is the part worth respecting. The register logs the setting as a plein, a square, and the owner as the municipality, so this was town planting from the start rather than a garden specimen that a street later grew around. It is banded 1920 to 1930, and the register's history field for it is blank. Crush a spray of the foliage between your fingers when you get there. Thuja plicata smells of pineapple.