The Arenbergpark Plane

This plane is on the drawing. It already appears on the late eighteenth century design for Arenbergpark, made when the Duke of Arenberg had his formal grounds recut in the English landscape style between 1775 and 1778, which is why Flanders' heritage inventory dates it, in its own careful wording, to possibly the end of the eighteenth century. Roughly 230 to 250 years is the honest reading of that, and it is an estimate off a period rather than a planting record. The register's own survey puts the trunk at 7.43 metres round at chest height and the crown at 34.5 metres across, wider than most streets in Leuven. It stands alone, which is unusual at that size. Planes are normally avenue trees, planted in rows and squeezed into shape by their neighbours. This one had the lawn to itself and spent two centuries using it. The castle it was laid out for belongs to KU Leuven now, and the engineering faculty works in the buildings, so the park is crossed by students all day and stays open, unfenced and free. Under either end of the register's date the tree was already mature when the German army burned the centre of Leuven in August 1914, and again when the city was bombed in May 1940. It has outlasted both.