The Plane Tree of Leibnizstrasse

The trunk of this plane stands flush with the street edge on Leibnizstrasse, so the pavement walks right past a pale, flaking column you cannot miss. Look up and the crown keeps going: it rises above the villa roofline on both sides, and Leipzig's register gives it a protected zone 27 metres across, one of the wider zones any plane on the city's list is granted. Planes are the great survivors of nineteenth-century streets. They tolerate compacted soil, cut roots and soot, and they shed their bark in plates, which is why the trunk reads as a patchwork of cream, olive and grey. Those are the habits that keep a tree like this going on a street where the villas beside it are still being scaffolded and restored. The city designated it Naturdenkmal number 138 in the late 1990s. The record says nothing about when it was planted, how tall it is or how big the trunk has grown. It has company. A second protected plane, number 131, is listed about 65 metres to the west at Gustav-Adolf-Strasse 19. We have not confirmed that it can be seen from the street, so look for it on the way rather than counting on it. The trunk itself stands at the front of a private property: view it from the pavement and do not go in. If you measure its girth, tell us.