The Marilandica Poplar

The trunk is the reason to come. It is deeply grooved and covered in burrs, hard woody swellings the size of fists and heads, which on a poplar of this age turn the bole into something closer to rock than bark. Burrs are the tree's response to damage or infection: a knot of dormant buds that keeps growing without ever making a shoot, laying down wildly disordered grain. Woodturners prize the timber for exactly that and pay serious money for a burr this size. Standing on a public park bank by a city canal is the safest place it could be. Marilandica is a named clone of the Canadian poplar, the hybrid of European black poplar and American cottonwood, selected and propagated by cuttings, which means every Marilandica anywhere is genetically the same tree. This one has been growing since the 1870s at the centre of the Prinsentuin by the Noorder Stadsgracht. Poplars are planted for speed and taken out early because they get brittle. This one has been left, and a century and a half of being left is what produced the trunk. Go and put your hands on it. That is the whole visit.