The Oriental Plane of the Beursgebouw

The plane tree in front of Leeuwarden's former stock exchange spent years hemmed in by brick paving before the city dug it back out in 2005 and built a proper rooting structure around the trunk. Inspectors called its condition merely adequate for years afterward; by 2022 they wrote that it was clearly thriving. The Beursgebouw behind it went up in 1880 for the city's grain and commodity traders and now houses part of the University of Groningen's Campus Fryslan. The tree came a generation later, planted sometime between 1900 and 1910 on what was then a green strip beside the building. A local nature guide's walking route singles it out for the fountain beside it and for the spiky seed balls the species drops each year. It is not Leeuwarden's only oriental plane. A second one, planted around the same years, stands 800 metres away in front of the railway station. This one is the one with the fountain and the old trading floor at its back, on Wirdumerdijk, in the middle of the old town rather than at its edge.