The Plane Tree of Letenye

For centuries the people of Letenye have used one plane tree as the place to meet, to court, to quarrel and to settle business. In 2010 a local civic association campaigned it to victory as Hungary's Tree of the Year, and a year later it came third in Europe with 8,836 votes. It stands in the castle park at Szabadság tér 15, the 5.6-hectare grounds of a Baroque castle the Szapáry family built in the mid-18th century and the Andrássy family later held. The tree is 20 metres tall and 6.15 metres round, and its crown spreads more than 36 metres, nearly twice as wide as the tree is high. Its age is where the sources part. The contest and Hungary's national contest site both say about 500 years; a 2015 local news article says about 300. Neither figure rests on a ring count or a planting record, so the honest answer is somewhere between the two. The town once held dances in its shade. They were stopped to protect the roots, which is a rare case of a town giving up a party for a tree. Couples still come for wedding photographs, and the plane has turned up in poems, letters and paintings. In November 2014 vandals damaged a plaque at the tree, and the town took it personally enough to make the local news. That report is also the latest we have found describing it alive and standing. If you have seen it since, tell us.