The Kulesza Plane

Plac Wolnosci has four legally protected trees and all four are the same species. They are London planes, the tree European cities reach for when the ground is paved, the air is exhaust and the roots have nowhere generous to go. Rather than number them, Poznan gave each a name: this is the Kulesza Plane, for Professor Witold Kulesza, designated with the other three on 16 May 2023 and entered in the national register three weeks later. It is the western of the pair that stand six metres apart along the southern side, the closest two of the group. The square it stands on runs as a long open rectangle between the Bazar hotel and the neoclassical front of the Raczynski Library, and it has been the city's ceremonial ground under two states and three names. The trees arrived at the start of the twentieth century, when the paving and the traffic around them were both lighter. Their condition is documented rather than assumed: the city commissioned a dendrological survey with acoustic tomography before the vote, and the four were found in good to very good health with a low risk of breakage.