Roosendaal's registered trees stand in four public places across town. De Kring square holds a pair of planes: a rare Oriental plane from around 1850, the wilder parent of the London plane, with a London plane from the 1900s about 13 metres in front of it. Emile van Loonpark holds a horse chestnut behind the pond that flowers every May. On Burgerhoutsestraat a catalpa and a London plane frame the same building from opposite sides, and in the old cemetery on Bachlaan a double-flowered horse chestnut from the 1870s stands alone among the graves.
0 of 8 visited in Roosendaal
Oriental Plane (Platanus orientalis) · 180 years
This Oriental plane stands by De Kring, a public square in Roosendaal, banded by the national register to a planting around 1850, roughly 180 years old. A horse chestnut of about the same age once shared the square with it; the register records that tree felled in 2014 and a young one planted in its place, which leaves the plane as the oldest trunk on De Kring. A London plane from around 1900 to 1910 stands about 13 metres east, in front of it.
Oriental plane is the older, wilder-growing parent of the hybrid London plane that lines so many European streets, native to southeast Europe and western Asia, and it is planted less often in the Netherlands than its more tolerant offspring. Left to grow on an open square rather than pruned to a street profile, an Oriental plane develops the same flaking, camouflage-patterned bark as its hybrid relative but with a more irregular, spreading crown, often leaning and forking low rather than rising in a single clean trunk.
The register records the species and the decade but nothing of who planted it or why, which is typical for a tree whose interest is simply having survived on the same square for nearly two centuries while whatever stood around it changed. If you know more of De Kring's own history, tell us.
Southern Catalpa (Catalpa bignonioides) · 130 years
This catalpa stands southwest of a building on Burgerhoutsestraat, banded by the national register to a planting around 1900, roughly 130 years old. A London plane the register also lists grows at the front of the same building, so the property carries two registered trees framing it from different sides, one native to the eastern United States and one a hybrid bred in seventeenth century Europe.
Southern catalpa is grown for its broad, heart-shaped leaves and, through midsummer, loose clusters of white flowers marked with purple and yellow spots inside each throat, followed by long, bean-like seed pods that can hang on the bare branches well into winter, giving the species its other common name, Indian bean tree, despite having no connection to India.
A catalpa at 130 years is well into a mature specimen's proportions, wide-crowned and often leaning or multi-stemmed if it was ever cut back hard when young. The register records nothing of who planted it or why, only the species and the decade. If you know more about this tree or the building it stands beside, tell us.
Horse Chestnut (Aesculus hippocastanum) · 160 years
This horse chestnut stands behind the pond in Emile van Loonpark, banded by the national register to a planting around 1870, roughly 160 years old. The park once held an older tree still, a Dutch lime the register bands to somewhere between 1750 and 1800, but the register records that lime as declared dead in 1998, so this chestnut is the park's registered veteran now.
A horse chestnut planted beside water has usually had reliable growing conditions its whole life, and at 160 years this one should show the full domed crown and heavy branch structure the species develops when left largely alone. Every May it produces the upright white flower spikes chestnuts are planted for across Europe, and reflected in the pond behind it, the display reads differently than a chestnut standing on hard pavement elsewhere in this list.
The register gives no further history for this tree, only species and decade. Emile van Loonpark is public and open daily, and this chestnut is the reason to walk to the far side of the pond rather than stopping at the park's edge. If you know more about it, tell us.
London Plane (Platanus x acerifolia) · 160 years
This London plane stands at the front of the same Burgerhoutsestraat building whose southwest corner holds a registered catalpa, banded by the national register to a planting around 1870, roughly 160 years old and a generation younger than its catalpa neighbour on the other side of the same property.
London plane is the hybrid that resulted from crossing an American and an Oriental species in seventeenth century Europe, and it turned out to tolerate compacted soil, air pollution and hard pruning better than almost any other large tree available, which is why it became the default choice for European streets and squares from the eighteenth century onward. Its bark flakes away in patches rather than splitting, leaving a mottled grey, green and cream pattern across the trunk that keeps changing as old plates drop and new bark shows through underneath.
At the front of a building rather than tucked behind it, this plane has likely had more pruning against passing traffic than its catalpa neighbour, which a plane tolerates without much complaint. The register records only species and decade. If you know the building's own history, tell us.
London Plane (Platanus x acerifolia) · 120 years · Centrum, De Kring
The national tree register describes this London plane by the tree behind it. About 13 metres west stands the Oriental plane of De Kring, one of the two species the London plane was bred from, so this corner of the square puts a hybrid and its parent side by side.
This is the front tree and the younger of the pair, banded by the register to a planting between 1900 and 1910, which makes it roughly 116 to 126 years old. The register gives it 25 metres of height to the Oriental plane's 22, and a trunk 3.6 metres round at chest height.
The pair have not had an easy century. In 2002 the Bomenstichting, the Dutch tree foundation, studied the ground beneath them and advised keeping both planes. Building went ahead anyway, inside the spread of their crowns and their roots. When the register last checked, in July 2023, it was mostly the Oriental plane behind whose crown had gone thin, with dead tips on its branches. This one is not the tree it describes as declining.
A horse chestnut once made this a trio. The register records it felled in 2014 and a young tree planted in its place, so that young tree is not part of the old group.
The register is the only source for this tree, and July 2023 is the last time it was recorded standing. If you have walked past it since, tell us.
Double Flowered Horsechestnut (Aesculus hippocastanum 'Baumannii') · 150 years · Roosendaal-Oost, Bachlaan
Every May this horse chestnut covers itself in white flowers, and every autumn it drops not a single conker. It is 'Baumannii', the double-flowered clone of the ordinary horse chestnut, and its flowers set no fruit.
The national tree register bands its planting to the 1870s, roughly 146 to 156 years ago. Sources disagree on when the Algemene Begraafplaats itself opened, somewhere between about 1880 and 1894, so the tree may be as old as the cemetery or older. Nobody has recorded how it came to stand here.
It has seen the cemetery's whole working life. Roosendaal buried its dead here until 1978, when the ground closed to new burials, and the chestnut stayed on among the grave rows, alone, 18 metres tall and 3.64 metres round at chest height.
Age has left its mark. The register notes a split in the main fork with small cracks beneath it, and in December 1999 the crown was thinned and anchored. It was inspected again in May 2025 and is still listed as monumental.
That register is the only record of this tree we have found; if you know its history, tell us. The cemetery is open daily from 8.00 to 16.30, and dogs are not allowed.
Copper Beech (Fagus sylvatica 'Atropunicea') · 175 years · Nispen
The thickest beech in Roosendaal's part of the national tree register is really three trunks grown into one. At chest height the copper beech at the gate of Nispen's parish cemetery measures 4.9 metres round, more than any other beech the register lists for Roosendaal. Look lower and the trick shows: 40 centimetres above the ground it is three stems, fused higher up into one flat, oval column. The register says so itself, so read the 490 as the girth of a fused mass rather than of a single trunk.
The height needs no footnote. It stands 26 metres tall, a purple crown over the corner where the cemetery entrance meets Heijbeeksestraat.
The Bomenstichting's Landelijk Register Monumentale Bomen puts its planting in the decade 1840 to 1850, which makes it roughly 175 years old. That register is the only source behind this entry, but it is a recent one: an inspector looked at the tree in September 2023 and kept it on the list as monumental. The ground belongs to the parish of the Maria Hemelvaartkerk, whose church stands in front of the cemetery.
You can see it from the street without going in. Nispen lies about six kilometres south of Roosendaal, close to the Belgian border, and the lime the village planted in 1909 for the birth of Princess Juliana stands 650 metres away.
Common Lime (Tilia x europaea) · 117 years · Nispen
Somewhere under this lime's roots lies a bottle with a letter in it. In May 1909 Nispen's Oranje-Comité planted the tree to mark the birth of Princess Juliana on 30 April, and a charter signed by mayor Coenen and the committee members was sealed in the bottle and buried at its foot. The village schoolchildren took part. The two sources disagree by a day on the planting, the 24th or the 25th of May, so May 1909 is as close as anyone can honestly put it.
The princess became queen in 1948. The tree stayed on its grass triangle where Dorpsstraat meets De Lind, and the village kept coming back to it. In 1993 the local history society, Heemkundekring de Heerlijckheijd Nispen, formally adopted the Julianalinde, and its sign was unveiled by Catharina Verhoeven, who had been one of the children at the planting 84 years earlier. For the hundredth year, in 2009, the society held an exhibition at the tree and the Oranje-Comité gave it an orange nest box.
Today it is 2.82 metres round and 18 metres tall, a common lime by the national register's identification. The register last checked it in April 2024 and found it in reasonable condition, with one complaint: the paving has closed in around it, and the inspector advised giving it a better place to grow.
It is free to visit at any hour, 650 metres from the copper beech at the cemetery gate.