The Silver Maple of the Veliusbrug

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.