The city's register carries this maple under two numbers, 204 centimetres and 191, because it has two trunks rather than one. That is the register being careful, and it is also the easiest way to find the tree: among the maples on this slope, look for the one going up as a pair. Sycamore is a mountain species, the maple of the Carpathians and the Alps, and it makes timber size on thin stony ground where most broadleaves give up. Park Bednarskiego, cut into a limestone quarry above Podgorze and planted from the 1890s, is that kind of ground. Three maple species grow here and this is the klon jawor, the one whose bark flakes off in plates as it ages, leaving the trunk mottled like a plane tree. It was protected in February 2017, one of four trees in this single garden that Krakow put on the natural monument register in one council resolution, alongside a black walnut, a European larch and an ash. Four monuments inside one park, which is why this hillside is worth an afternoon rather than a detour. Nobody has dated it, and no source says whether it was planted here or seeded itself, which sycamore does readily. If you know more about this one, tell us.
In fruit
September to October: winged seeds that spin down in pairs
The line is our estimate of how much there is to see, not a measurement. Typical for this species where this tree stands; exact weeks shift with the year.
Park im. Wojciecha Bednarskiego, Podgorze, KrakowYou can recognise it by the two trunks rising as a pair, 204 and 191 centimetres round, and by bark that flakes off in plates as it ages, like a plane tree's. It stands among the maples of Park Bednarskiego.
Free, open public park (Zarzad Zieleni Miejskiej), entrances on ul. Parkowa and ul. Zamoyskiego near Plac Niepodleglosci
Podgorze tram stops (Rondo Matecznego / Plac Bohaterow Getta area), roughly 10-15 min walk uphill into the park
Sources
Where the facts on this page come from.