The Grey Poplar of Vosseparkje

A Historisch Centrum Leeuwarden walking brochure and the national tree register agree down to the year: this grey poplar on the east side of Vosseparkje's pond went into the ground in 1909, one of the exotic and unusual trees the brochure singles out on a route otherwise lined with white and red horse chestnuts. It survived the storm of 1970 that flattened trees across the Netherlands and remains, in the register's own words, healthy and structurally sound more than a century later. The species is a hybrid of white poplar and aspen, common enough as roadside planting but rarely old enough to earn a place in a national monumental-trees register. It stands on the pond's east bank in Westerpark, known locally as Vosseparkje, alongside a leaning white acacia the same brochure records as propped up nearby, and, on the park's far side, a Caucasian wingnut with a trunk more than a metre round. Together they form the park's own cluster of registered trees, a short walk from the Prinsentuin and Princessehof gardens where most of Leeuwarden's other old trees stand.