The Straszewskiego Ash

European ash is one of the commonest trees in Poland and a thick one is not common at all. This specimen stands on the pavement of ul. Straszewskiego, on the western edge of Planty a few minutes below Wawel, and measures 375 centimetres around. That is what earned it a place on the city's natural monument register in 1987. Its age is arithmetic rather than record. The girth works out at roughly 119 centimetres of diameter, and a published growth factor returns something near 190 years from that. Two things keep it a range instead of a number. The factor is borrowed from green ash, the closest documented relative that has one, and no tape measure can see what two centuries of drought years, good years and street rebuilding did inside the trunk. Call it 150 to 220 years and leave it there. Only a core sample would settle it. The species itself has had a hard three decades. A fungal dieback spreading west since the 1990s has thinned ash across Europe, killing young and old trees alike and making veterans of this size less ordinary every year than they used to be. This one is still standing, on a public pavement, free to walk up to at any hour.