The London Plane of Huismanspark

Lith once had two big plane trees standing side by side here, and the national register of monumental trees calls the one that is gone the quarrelsome one. It was felled before 2009; it is the left-hand tree in an older register photograph. This is the plane that was kept. By the register's figures it is 4.85 metres round and 24 metres tall, numbers that carry no measurement date. The register puts its planting in the 1850s, which makes it somewhere between 166 and 176 years old. Who planted it, and why, is not written down: the history field reads 'unknown'. It has not been left to grow as it pleased. The register's notes mention candelabra pruning, the habit of cutting limbs back to a fixed frame, and splits in the trunk. Even so, an inspector found it standing in August 2023, photographed it, and kept it on the list as monumental. It stands on its own in the Huismanspark, a municipal planting in the centre of Lith, close to Kerkstraat. Lith is a village on the Maas in the municipality of Oss, about eight kilometres west of the town. The plane has stood in that village centre for some 170 years. Everything on this page rests on one source, the register, with that 2023 visit as the latest word on the tree. If you know who planted it, or what happened to its neighbour, tell us.