The Gülhane London Plane

A London plane cannot be much older than about 350 years, because the hybrid did not exist before roughly 1670. This one, at about 285, comfortably fits, which is not true of every tree the Turkish registry files under that name. Two of Istanbul's own registered giants carry the same label at ages that would make the hybrid older than itself; here the arithmetic works, and the identification is plausible rather than proven. Turkey's national monumental tree registry records it at 33 metres tall with a trunk 170 centimetres across and an age of 277 years. Istanbul's metropolitan municipality publishes its own page for this exact tree, with identical measurements, saying it has stood in Gülhane Park since 1741. The two numbers add up to 2018, so both trace to one survey rather than two independent measurements. Two official bodies, one field visit, worth knowing. For most of its life nobody could walk past it. Gülhane was the outer garden of Topkapı Palace, court ground rather than public space, until it opened in 1912 as Istanbul's first public park. The tree was already 170 years old by then. It stands about 40 metres from a registered nettle tree of similar age, 350 metres from the Topkapı courtyard plane and 550 metres from the Taşlı Çınar, which makes this the densest walking cluster in the city.