The Pagoda Tree of Harrie van Haaren

The cultivar is named after the man who first noticed this tree comes out the wrong colour. Japanese pagoda trees leaf out green. This one opens white and gold, a habit the Dutch dendrologist Harrie van Haaren (1925-1990) was the first to describe, and the reason his name is attached to it. Its own paperwork argues about its age. The national register of monumental trees files it under a planting band of 1880 to 1890, while the history note inside that same record states flatly that it went in the ground in 1918, and an independent Dutch tree archive says 1918 as well. Two sources against one field, so read it as about 108 years old and treat the 1880s band as a slip of the pen. It stands in the northern half of Aldenhofpark, the section laid out in 1918 by the Rosseels family of landscape architects; the western half has been an English-style landscape park since 1837. Around it, Maastricht's Stadspark green belt holds some fifteen officially designated monumental trees, and this is one of only two pagoda trees among them, listed in the register's top honour class. What nobody has done is put a tape around it. No girth or height is recorded anywhere we can find. If you have measured it, tell us.