Doctors' Garden started life in 1896 as one of Sofia's first botanical gardens, a role it kept for roughly four decades before the collection was absorbed elsewhere and the grounds became an ordina...
Gray Poplar
Populus canescens
Gray poplar is a natural cross between white poplar and aspen, and it grows fast enough that a thick trunk is no proof of great age the way it would be on an oak. We map 4 of them, in 4 cities.
Ferrara's, over 150 years old and 4.44 metres round, grew for most of that time screening a private courtyard at the Palazzo dei Diamanti, one of the Italian Renaissance's most recognisable buildings, until a 2023 restoration opened the garden to visitors. Sofia's is the oldest tree in the Doctors' Garden, planted in 1892, four years before the garden formally opened as one of the city's first botanical collections. Warsaw's, on a pavement corner in Mokotow, holds an entry in Poland's national register at 21 metres tall. In Hoorn, storms have torn into one's crown and inspectors still rate it in good condition.
Sofia
Warsaw
Poland protects this tree by name and by number.
Ferrara
This gray poplar has grown in the garden of one of the Italian Renaissance's most recognisable buildings for more than a century and a half, long enough to have watched the palace's stone facade go...
Hoorn
Storms have torn real damage into this poplar's crown, and it has kept growing anyway: inspectors call its overall condition good despite it.
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