Hoorn's oldest trees stand where its city walls used to. Through the nineteenth century the old East India Company town dismantled its fortifications, and the emptied ground became the Oosterplantsoen, a park anchored by the Oosterpoort, the last of the town's medieval gates. Eight registered trees grow within a few hundred metres of each other: a copper beech lighting up translucent red every May, a silver maple missing its twin, an elm that survived two waves of Dutch elm disease, and a plane whose species nobody has confirmed. All eight come from the national monumental tree register.
0 of 8 visited in Hoorn
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The Copper Beech of the Oosterpoortsgracht
Copper Beech (Fagus sylvatica f. purpurea) · roughly 160 years, from a registered planting date around 1870 · Oosterpoort
Every copper beech in Europe descends from a handful of freak trees found growing purple in ordinary green forests, most famously in Germany in the seventeenth century. The colour is a mutation that overproduces red pigment, useless to the tree and irresistible to gardeners, and it has been propagated by grafting ever since. This one stands at the water's edge of the Oosterpoortsgracht in Hoorn, beside the Oosterpoort, the fifteenth century gate that is the only one of the town's medieval gates left standing. The national register dates the planting to between 1860 and 1870, roughly 160 years, and lists the tree on the municipal monument list and on the town's own tree route. Through the nineteenth century, as the walls and towers came down, the emptied defences were remade as a walking park, which is the ground this tree grew up in and the reason it has had room. Come in May rather than autumn. New copper beech leaves open translucent, lit red from behind like stained glass, and darken to near black-purple within weeks. By August the crown is a hole in the light. The register is the only source we have found that records this tree individually, so read the age as its estimate rather than a measurement.
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2
The Plane of the Pakhuisstraat
London Plane (Platanus x acerifolia) · roughly 160 years, from a registered planting date around 1870 · Oosterplantsoen
Four metres of trunk and nowhere to put it. This plane stands on the Pakhuisstraat by the aviary in the Oosterplantsoen, and the register, which otherwise calls it a perfect specimen, notes that the base is being squeezed by the pavement along the street. That is the standard fate of a big plane in a Dutch town: the tree keeps widening at the foot and the kerb does not move. The register dates the planting to between 1860 and 1870, so roughly 160 years, and it is the only source we have found that records this tree on its own. London plane came out of a seventeenth century accident, a cross between the American and the oriental plane that nobody planned and everybody planted afterwards, and it turned out to handle coal smoke, hard soil and heavy pruning better than either parent. Hoorn was a Dutch East India Company town whose walls were coming down through the century this tree went in, and the emptied ground became the walking park it now stands in. Look at the trunk rather than the crown. The bark comes away in irregular plates and leaves a camouflage of cream, olive and grey, and at four metres round there is a lot of it to look at from close up.
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3
The Silver Maple of the Veliusbrug
Silver Maple (Acer saccharinum) · roughly 160 years, from a registered planting date around 1870 · Oosterplantsoen
There were two of these by the Veliusbrug and now there is one. The other stood on the south side of the path, developed bark necrosis, went partly hollow and was taken down as a limb-drop risk. The survivor carries a serious fungal infection of its own and, in the register's assessment, is still growing reasonably. It is close to five metres round. Silver maple is the fastest growing maple there is and pays for the speed with brittle wood, which is why big old ones so often stand alone next to the place where their neighbour used to be. Acer saccharinum comes from the river bottoms of eastern North America, and everything about it suits a wet Dutch park: it tolerates flooding, roots hard into soft ground and grows a metre a year while it is young. The register dates the planting to between 1860 and 1870, so roughly 160 years, and it is the only source we have found for this tree. The name is in the leaf. Deeply cut, almost skeletal, green above and chalk white beneath, so that any wind turns the whole crown silver and back again. It flowers absurdly early, in February or March, before anything else here has thought about it, in small red clusters most people walk under without noticing.
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4
The Plane of Number 37
Plane (Platanus sp.) · roughly 150 years, from a registered planting date around 1880 · Oosterplantsoen
The register gives this one a planting year rather than a band: 1871, at the waterside of the Oosterpoortsgracht in the Oosterplantsoen. What it does not give is a species. It is a plane, and the entry goes no further than that, so we have not either. The two candidates are the London plane, which is most of what got planted in Dutch towns after 1850, and the oriental plane, which is its parent and turns up in nineteenth century parks more often than people expect. The leaves settle it: five deep narrow lobes cut most of the way to the middle means oriental, three to five shallower lobes on a broader blade means London. If you are standing under it and you know which one you are looking at, tell us and we will put your answer on this page. What the register does say is that the tree has grown a full, even crown, which is unusual for a plane of that age in a town, where most of them have been cut back off a building or a road at some point. This one has had the water on one side and the old walking park on the other, and about 150 years to use the room.
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5
The Elm of the Oosterpoort
Dutch Elm (Ulmus x hollandica) · roughly 140 years, from a registered planting date around 1890 · Oosterpoort
Dutch elm disease is named after the Dutch scientists who identified the fungus in the 1920s, not after the country's elms, but it took those too. Two waves of it, the second from the 1960s, removed the elm from most of the Netherlands as a street tree. This one has come through both. It stands on the east side of the Oosterpoort, the fifteenth century gate that is the last of Hoorn's medieval gates, at the water's edge, and the register dates it to between 1880 and 1890, so roughly 140 years. Having survived the beetle, it lost its top to a storm, probably the summer storm of 2023, and carries other wind damage besides. The register still calls the trunk impressive, and notes how well it greens up in spring. That is fair. Ulmus x hollandica leafs out in a hard, glossy green that the limes and planes around it cannot match, the leaves rough as sandpaper on top and lopsided at the base, which is the elm giveaway. Before the leaves come, in February, the whole crown turns dull red with tufted flowers. The national register is the only source we have found for this tree, so read the age as its estimate. If you know when the top came out, we would like to hear it.
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6
The Plane behind the Aviary
London Plane (Platanus x acerifolia) · roughly 140 years, from a registered planting date around 1890 · Oosterplantsoen
This plane stands behind the aviary in the Oosterplantsoen, out of the way of the street, and it has grown accordingly: a trunk of over four metres round and, in the register's words, a perfect tree. Its neighbour a couple of hundred metres away on the Pakhuisstraat is the same species and two decades older, and has spent its life fighting the kerb. The difference between the two is simply where somebody put them. The register dates this one to between 1880 and 1890, so roughly 140 years, and it is the only source we have found that records it. Planes are the reason nineteenth century park designers could plan at all. They grow fast, take any soil, survive being moved as large trees and can be cut back to knuckles and come again, which made them the safe bet on new public ground like this, laid out where Hoorn's walls and towers had been. The catch arrives in June, when the undersides of the young leaves shed fine hairs that get into throats, and again in autumn when the seed balls break up and do the same. Neither is a reason to skip it. Stand close to the bole and look up through the mottled bark and horizontal limbs, and give it the time it takes to register how much tree is above you.
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7
The Silver Lime of the Oosterplantsoen
Silver Lime (Tilia tomentosa) · roughly 140 years, from a registered planting date around 1890 · Oosterplantsoen
Silver lime is the last of the limes to flower, and in a park full of trees that have already finished it can be the only thing working in July. This one stands near the Veliusbrug in the Oosterplantsoen with a trunk of over four metres round, which the register credits to about 140 years of undisturbed growth: it dates the planting to between 1880 and 1890 and is the only source we have found that records the tree. Tilia tomentosa came from southeastern Europe and Asia Minor and Dutch towns adopted it late, largely because it holds up in dirty air better than the common lime and does not drip the same sticky rain of aphid honeydew onto whatever is parked beneath. The tomentosa in the name means felted. Every leaf is dark green above and white with fine hairs below, so the crown changes colour with the wind and, on a bright day, looks lit from underneath. In leaf it is one of the densest shade trees in this park. It also gets called out for the bumblebees found dead under it in late summer, once blamed on the nectar and now more often put down to the tree flowering when starving bees have nothing else left to visit.
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8
The Chestnut of Number 37
Horse Chestnut (Aesculus hippocastanum) · roughly 120 years, from a registered planting date around 1910 · Oosterplantsoen
The register gives this chestnut an actual planting year, 1901, which is rarer than it sounds: most trees on this list carry a ten year band and nothing better. It stands at the water's edge of the Oosterpoortsgracht opposite number 37, on the municipal monument list and on the town's tree route, and the register describes a full crown that storms have since knocked about without slowing the tree down. Aesculus hippocastanum is a Balkan tree that reached western Europe in the sixteenth century and was planted everywhere on the strength of two weeks in May. The rest of its case is autumn. Late September the spiny green cases start splitting on the path and the conker inside comes out mahogany brown and polished, the single most collectible object a European tree produces, and worthless the moment it dries out. The species name hippocastanum means horse chestnut, from an old belief that the seeds cured coughing in horses; for people they are simply poisonous. The national register is the only source we have found for this tree, so read the date as its record rather than an independent one. Come with a pocket in October and you will not leave with it empty.
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