One of the tallest trees in Amsterdam stands on the edge of a bicycle path, not in a forest.
Canadian Poplar
Populus x canadensis
Canadian poplar is a hybrid of Europe's black poplar and an American cottonwood, bred for timber and shelter belts: fast, soft, and usually felled within decades rather than left for centuries. We map 9 of them, in 7 cities.
The old ones are the trees somebody forgot to take out. The oldest poplar in the Netherlands grows behind a concert hall in Arnhem, on the last stretch of moat the city never filled in, and has stood since somewhere between 1750 and 1800. Amsterdam's in the Vondelpark has reached about 38 metres on the edge of a bicycle path. Leeuwarden's Marilandica, a named clone, has a trunk so covered in burrs that it reads closer to rock than bark. Warsaw's was already mature when the ground it stands on became a transit camp in 1944, and Antwerp's runs six metres of clear trunk before the crown starts.
Amsterdam
Every year Amsterdam inspects this poplar and decides whether it can stay another one.
Leeuwarden
The trunk is the reason to come.
Warsaw
A mass grave was reportedly dug beneath this tree in August 1944, according to testimony from survivors of the transit camp that once stood around it.
Photo: Panek (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Antwerp
At 35 metres, this Canadian poplar is among the tallest trees recorded anywhere in Antwerp, its trunk clear of branches for a full 6 metres before the crown even begins, a shape that comes from gro...
Photo: Geert Van der Linden / Flanders Immovable Heritage Agency (CC BY 4.0)
Arnhem
The Netherlands' oldest poplar grows behind a concert hall, on the last stretch of canal Arnhem never filled in.
Den Bosch
If the register's count holds, this poplar was planted around 1941, which puts it in the ground under German occupation and makes it a young tree when the fighting for the city came through in the...
Deventer
The giant of De Worp is called that because of its size, and its size is what nearly got its age wrong.
A Canadian poplar is a crop.
Explore by city: Amsterdam · Leeuwarden · Warsaw · Antwerp · Arnhem · Den Bosch · Deventer · Prague · every city · or browse all species.