The Poplar of Josef-Mayburger-Kai

A whole floodplain wood once ran along this bank of the Salzach. This black poplar is one of the last pieces of it still standing. The Land Salzburg register says exactly that in its own entry: a remnant of the Weichholzaue, the softwood riparian forest that used to line this stretch of the river. Softwood there is not a verdict on the timber. It is the word for the willows and poplars that colonise a river's wet edge, the trees that arrive first on new ground and go first when a bank is tidied. That woodland has gone from here. A paved promenade runs in its place, and the poplar stands beside it near the Traklsteg footbridge, about two kilometres downstream from the old town, with the water on one side and Itzling on the other. The register cites a trunk circumference of over six metres, which is a figure we are passing on rather than one we measured, and Salzburg listed the tree as a natural monument, NDM00173, in 1979. It has ended up with its own category in the Wikimedia photograph archive, seven pictures of one riverside poplar, which is more attention than most trees on that promenade will ever get. Nobody has dated it. The register carries the year of protection and nothing else, and 1979 is a floor rather than an age. If you know when this poplar went in, or you have put a tape around it yourself, tell us.