The Powroznicza Honey Locust

Twelve metres from the library's red oak stands its quieter neighbour, a honey locust with a trunk two metres twenty three around, one of relatively few of its species protected anywhere in Krakow as a natural monument. Both trees share the same garden, the grounds of the Podgorze district public library, a villa built in the 1880s that has kept its grounds open to the public since it became a library in 1988. Gleditsia triacanthos is a North American species, armed in the wild with vicious branching thorns that cultivated street and garden specimens are usually bred without, and it took to European ornamental planting in the nineteenth century the way its oak neighbour did. Poland's national register protects it on species and location alone, with no girth or age recorded there; the city's own official list adds the measurement. The two protection dates disagree by a decade, 1987 nationally against 1997 in the city record, in the same pattern as its neighbour and several other Krakow trees this pass checked, most likely a province wide reconfirmation rather than two different true dates. No age has been established. If you know one, tell us.