The Plane of Number 37

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.