The Sweet Gum of Waldeckpark

Its Latin name means liquid amber, and it earned it: cut the bark of a sweet gum and it bleeds a fragrant resin that North Americans chewed like gum and burned like incense. The leaf looks like a maple's, five points and a long stalk, and the tree is not remotely a maple. It is a cousin of witch hazel, and it holds its colour later into the year than almost anything else standing in Waldeckpark. When it was planted is a question the paperwork itself hedges. The national register of monumental trees notes that it was most likely put in when Leonard Springer laid out this park in 1921, and most likely is the register's own wording rather than ours. Springer's design is documented: a romantic layout on the demolished Waldeck bastion, with a rose avenue and the old fortification ruins left in place. Whether this particular tree belongs to that planting is not recorded anywhere we could reach, so call it roughly a hundred years old and leave the rest open. No girth or height has been published for it either. It stands near the roundabout at the western end of the park, on city ground, free and open. Somebody with a tape measure could improve this entry in ten minutes.