Box Elder

It seeds itself into alleys and vacant lots, drops limbs without warning, hosts the boxelder bugs that swarm into houses every autumn, and rarely gets the chance to grow old before someone cuts it down as a weed. It is also, unusually for a maple, compound-leafed, so people routinely mistake it for an ash. The old ones are the exceptions that outlasted the reputation. Setubal's, about 117 years old, stands in the Jardim do Bonfim on ground that was open country when it went in. Eindhoven's, planted in a parish churchyard in the 1920s, has outlived the congregation that put it there. Chicago's, on a public golf course in Edgebrook, is Illinois's state champion. And Krasnystaw's is famous for its shape: the trunk kneels almost to the ground before curving back up, beside the town hall on the market square.