The Çengelköy Plane

This tree spent a night on the ground and got back up. For around 180 years the plane tree at Çengelköy's ferry pier square was the neighbourhood's defining landmark, a canopy wide enough to shade the waterfront tea garden now named Çınaraltı after it. In July 2017 a storm that felled more than 2,000 trees across Istanbul tore this one out of the ground, root ball and all. City crews arrived the next morning and, rather than clear it away, tried something rarer: they propped the trunk back into position, wrapped the exposed roots in felt to stop them drying out, pruned back the crown to reduce the load, and waited. Nothing visible happened for a year. Then new shoots appeared, then small leaves, then, over successive seasons, branches thick enough to look like a tree again rather than a patient. It has not fully recovered the shape it had before the storm, but locals who watched it get carried out for dead now watch it get greener every spring, sitting exactly where it always did at the edge of the Bosphorus.