The Sycamore Maple of Parc Monceau

A sycamore four and a half metres round is a big sycamore anywhere, and this one stands eighty metres from Parc Monceau's great oriental plane. For its own species, this trunk is every bit as worth the walk. The city's fact sheet dates it to 1853. Parc Monceau was then still a private estate, the old pleasure garden of the dukes of Orleans. It opened as a public park in 1861, under Haussmann, so the sycamore spent its first eight years behind closed gates and every year since in a public park. The open register leaves the planting year blank, so the 1853 rests on the printed sheet. The register measures it at 437 centimetres round and 28 metres tall; the sheet gives 450 centimetres. Sycamores are maples, not planes, despite the name and the similar leaves. They are hardy, fast trees that seed themselves across much of Europe, so common that people stop seeing them, which is exactly why a trunk this size is worth stopping for. The pin is approximate, on the register's point rather than on a trunk anyone has confirmed. Once you have seen the great plane, walk on and look for a broad maple trunk nearby, and tell us if you found it. A photograph would help everyone after you.