The Ymeria Bundle Plane
age unknownLondon Plane
Which one is it? Impossible to mistake: one hollow-based trunk over nine metres round beside the Ymeria community house, on the street corner rather than inside the sports grounds.
A bicycle rack stands inside this tree, or did when Flanders' heritage agency last reported on it. The base is hollow and roomy enough for that, and the trunk measures 9.20 metres round at chest height, which the agency calls one of the thickest planes in the country. It is probably also not one tree. The inventory records it as a bundelboom, a bundle tree: several young planes dropped into a single planting hole and left to fuse, a nineteenth century shortcut to a thick trunk without waiting a century for one. A local reading disagrees and says it was simply pollarded hard when young. The agency's own account leaves both open. Which is why there is no age here. The usual method reads a girth against a species' growth rate and assumes one stem did the growing; several stems grown together would return a number far too old, and an invented century is worse than an empty field. It probably stands on a filled-in arm of the Dijle that once marked the boundary between Wilsele and Wijgmaal. It has been protected as a monument since 2010. In 2015 the city and the heritage agency had its stability assessed and pruned it back as a precaution, and the report described the heavy limbs as still growing strongly.
The button above opens directions in your maps app. Wijgmaal, Leuven; roughly 20-25 minutes from Leuven centre by bus toward Wilsele/Wijgmaal
- Species
- London Plane (Platanus x acerifolia)
- Age estimate
- Location
- Beside the Ymeria community house (ontmoetingshuis Ymeria) and sports grounds, at the corner of Pastoor Bellonstraat and Weggevoerdenstraat, Wijgmaal, Leuven (Wijgmaal (Wilsele boundary))
- Access
- Free, public. Stands beside the Ymeria community meeting house (ontmoetingshuis) and sports grounds in Wijgmaal, at a street corner rather than inside the fenced pitches. Onroerend Erfgoed's own 2015 field report calls it 'this busy, publicly visited location' (deze druk bezochte publieke locatie). The football pitches themselves are bookable by reservation (confirmed via leuven.be/voetbalterreinen-ymeria), but the tree itself stands at the community-house/street side, not on the enclosed playing surface.
- Getting there
- Wijgmaal, Leuven; roughly 20-25 minutes from Leuven centre by bus toward Wilsele/Wijgmaal
Trees nearby
Ticking this one off, walks past several more, and your collection growing city by city: that is the Ancient Trees app.
Get the appThis page was researched from a distance. If you know this tree, you know things we do not: the species, the age, the size, whether the photo shows the right tree, or that it is gone. Every field on this page can be corrected.
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