The Zakrzewski Silver Maple

This is not a Polish tree. Acer saccharinum grows wild in the river bottoms of eastern North America, where it takes the spring floods that kill other species, and it reached European parks as an ornamental fast-grower with a habit of shedding limbs in storms. Poznan's finest example holds 271 centimetres of girth at about 105 years old, which is quick work, and the city made it a natural monument on 16 April 2024, naming it for Professor Zbigniew Zakrzewski. It stands on the Skwer Zielone Ogrodki, the strip of small green squares laid out where Zielona meets Strzelecka, a few minutes from the Old Market Square and free at any hour. The species gives itself away in wind: the leaves are cut into deep, narrow lobes and the undersides are almost white, so a gust turns the whole crown pale for a second and then back again. The press covering the designation called it an exceptionally fine specimen of its kind, which for a silver maple in a Polish city centre is a real compliment: most of them are planted, admired for a few decades and then quietly removed after the first bad storm.