Munich protects this maple for being big, which says more about the species than about the tree.
Norway Maple
Acer platanoides
Norway maple is one of the most planted street trees in northern Europe, valued for tolerating road salt, compacted soil and bad air, and just as routinely cut back once it outgrows its spot, so an old one is what a city decided to keep. We map 5 of them, in 4 cities.
Riga's Zasulauks maple, beside a wooden tenement in the Kalnciema Quarter, measured four metres round in 1975 and 5.34 by 2009, a third of its waistline added in thirty-four years. One in Den Bosch stands on a two-metre-thick fortress bastion built in 1634. Munich protects two under a 2021 natural monument ordinance: one on Mondstrasse defines its square, the other on Herrnstrasse survives for being rare at its size among inner-city courtyards. Snap a leaf stalk and it bleeds white sap, the surest way to tell a Norway maple from the sycamore it is otherwise mistaken for.
Munich
Autumn colour
Its leaf stalks bleed white when they break.
Krakow
Norway maple is the tree Krakow plants when it simply needs a tree.
Den Bosch
Autumn colour
This Norway maple grows on top of two-metre-thick fortress walls built in 1634, the year the Dutch States Army needed a new bastion to close a gap in Den Bosch's defences after capturing the city f...
Riga
In 1975 this maple measured four metres round.
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