Poplars are not supposed to get this old, which is the entire reason to go and look at this one.
Ancient Trees in Wilhelminapark
Leonard Springer drew the Wilhelminapark in the 1890s and opened it to the public in May 1898, and part of what makes it worth a visit is that he built around ground that already had trees on it rather than a blank field.
Tilburg's oldest elm, on the Dutch national monument register, was standing here before Springer arrived, and a Canadian poplar nearby is older still, from a planting band of 1860 to 1870, decades before the park existed. Springer's own planting survives too: a weeping silver lime he put in himself in 1898, dated to the year in the register's own note, and a flowering ash from the northwest corner that the register admits you can barely see. The fifth tree breaks the pattern entirely. A Pontic oak from the 1970s, a species found wild only in one pocket of northeast Turkey and the Caucasus, is protected not for its age but for what it is, a rarity the register lists under a single word: dendrological. All five stand within a few minutes of each other, free and open daily.
All 5 stand in Tilburg, which maps 20 remarkable trees in total.
The register says two things about this tree and both are worth having.
The national register lists this tree and then admits you probably cannot see it.
Most old park trees are dated by guesswork.
The Dutch national register protects this one for a single stated reason, and the reason is not its age.
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