The Silver Maple behind the Library

The thickest trunk we map in Roosendaal belongs to a tree only 12 metres tall. This silver maple on the lawn behind the library in Emile van Loonpark measures 5.25 metres round at chest height, more than the Oriental plane at De Kring and more than the White Willow of Heijbeek. For scale, the registered silver maple on Gripper in Oss measures 4.31 metres, and the one on Nijmegen's Sumatraplein 2.94. The Landelijk Register Monumentale Bomen bands its planting to the 1870s, which makes it roughly 150 years old. The register records a decade, not a year, so read that as a range of ten. It also records the shape: a kandelaber, a crown cut back at some point to a frame of upright limbs rather than left to spread. The inspector's notes are frank. On one side the limbs meet in many tight, weak forks, and the register recommends thinning the crown and possibly fitting a storm anchor to hold it together. The most recent inspection the register shows is from March 2023, so that is the latest word on its health we can point to. If you have seen it since, tell us how it looks. The park is free and sits off the Markt, about ten minutes on foot from Roosendaal station. Three more registered trees stand within a couple of hundred metres: the horse chestnut behind the pond, a black locust at the Markt end and a Caucasian wingnut on the railway side.