The Karmelicka Elm

Elms are the trees Europe mostly lost, which is why a protected one standing on a working Krakow street is worth the quarter hour it takes to walk out from the Main Square. This is a European white elm, wiaz szypulkowy in Polish, on the pavement outside ul. Karmelicka 51 in Piasek, a few streets west of the Planty ring. Its trunk measures 290 centimetres around. The species belongs to wet ground, river floodplains and old flood terraces rather than dry city verges. It gives itself away in early spring, before the leaves: the flowers and then the seeds hang out on long stalks, which is what the Polish name records, and every flat seed case is fringed with fine white hairs. Poland's national register dates the protection to 1998. The city's own published list says 1997. Both entries carry the same register number and the same girth, so what disagrees is a year on paper rather than the identity of the tree. Nobody has recorded its age. The register holds a girth and an address and nothing else, and no other dated white elm in this city offers anything to measure it against. If you know when this one went into the pavement, tell us.