The Chrzanowski Plane

Four hundred and eighty four centimetres of trunk for a tree the city puts at only about a hundred years old is a startling ratio, thick enough to raise a real question about whether the age is right. Poznan's own estimate is the only one on record, so the figure stands here flagged rather than treated as settled. The plane grows in Park Wilsona, home to the Palmiarnia, one of Europe's larger palm houses, and carries the name of Bernard Chrzanowski, a lawyer, independence activist and pioneer of Poland's hiking and tourist-trail movement who died in 1944. The council designated it a natural monument in spring 2025, alongside a ginkgo named for a different Poznan botanist elsewhere in the same park. Whatever explains the girth, the tree needs no defending on its own terms: a London plane this size, in a park built around a landmark greenhouse, is a destination in its own right. It stands free to reach at any hour, directly opposite the Park Wilsona tram stop, no gate between the street and the trunk.