The Oriental Plane of Stationsplein

Step off the train at Leeuwarden and the first old tree you meet is the wrong plane. Almost every plane on a Dutch square is a London plane, the hybrid bred for city air and planted by the thousand. This one is the parent species, an Oriental plane, which is rare this far north and which the national register carries under its Dutch name, oosterse plataan, at the Stationsplein. It has held the open ground in front of the station since about 1900. Both sources that carry it agree: the city's own list of its ten most special trees dates it circa 1900, and the register gives a planting band of 1900 to 1910, so it is somewhere between 116 and 126 years old. The crown has spread the way planes on open squares do, low and wide over the paving, with the station front behind it. Which means every arrival in this city by rail for more than a century has walked past it, most of them watching the clock rather than the tree. It stood there through the war and through the century of traffic that has crossed this square since. Nobody has taped its girth. If you have a tape measure and a few minutes between trains, tell us.