The Gray Poplar of Wilhelminapark

Storms have torn real damage into this poplar's crown, and it has kept growing anyway: inspectors call its overall condition good despite it. The trunk is just over four metres round, a serious size for a species that rarely gets the chance to grow old in a Dutch park. Wilhelminapark itself dates to 1950, laid out by the garden architect J.H.R. van Koolwijk and named for Queen Wilhelmina the same year, next to the Oranjebuurt neighbourhood then under construction. The tree's own planting date is disputed even by the sources that recorded it: the municipal survey suggests it went in with the park in 1950, then adds that other records put it nearer 1935, fifteen years earlier. Either reading makes it one of the older plantings on this stretch of the pond's west bank. Gray poplars hybridise readily with white poplar and aspen, and a trunk this size on a tree still holding a full, storm-battered crown is exactly the kind the species is protected for here. It stands free to see on the western side of the park's pond, on Emmalaan.