The Planes of Delftseplein

Four planes, three London and one Oriental, went into the ground together around 1860 as planting around a pond that once sat in front of Rotterdam's original Centraal Station entrance. The pond and that entrance are both gone, replaced by later station buildings, but the trees stayed on Delftseplein through every rebuild the station itself went through, including the one that flattened most of the surrounding neighbourhood in May 1940. Mixing Oriental plane in with the more common London plane hybrid in one planting was not unusual for 19th-century Dutch civic gardening, a hedge against uncertainty about which would thrive better on reclaimed, disturbed ground next to a working rail yard. Whichever species won that test is no longer the point; all four have made it past a century and a half. They stand together, free, immediately east of the current station building, close enough that anyone stepping off a train into Rotterdam is likely to walk past the oldest trees on the whole route without knowing it.