The Lasipalatsi Willow

The first tree in Finland ever placed under official protection was this one, in 1924, and the protection did not save it. The willow had gone in around 1830 beside the Turku Barracks then being built in Kamppi, grew into one of the best known trees in Helsinki, and came down in a storm on 29 December 2003 after 173 years. What stands on Salomonkatu today is not that tree. Cuttings had been taken while the old willow was still up, one was raised on, and on 13 April 2011 it went back into the exact spot behind a low protective fence. Genetically it is the same willow, a clone of the 1830 tree. Physically it is about fifteen years old and slight enough that nobody has recorded a girth for it. The address is nearly two centuries old and the trunk is not, and both of those are true at once. Even the species is unsettled. It is a hybrid weeping willow, isoriippasalava, carrying the cultivar name 'Lasipalatski' after the building beside it, with white willow, weeping willow and Caucasian willow all put forward among its parents. Two minutes from Kamppi metro, on an open pedestrian street. Travelling to see a young tree sounds like a poor trade until you understand what the spot is, and that the city thought the line worth keeping going.