The Plane behind the Aviary

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.