The Old Plane of Quai de la Bruche

Postcards and travel listings will tell you this plane tree was planted in 1667. It was not, and the reason is botanical rather than archival: the London plane is a hybrid of the oriental and American planes that only appeared in Europe during the 18th century. In 1667 the tree did not exist as a kind of tree anywhere on the continent. Something old did stand here, though. The quay was called the Wasserzoll until the Revolution, after the water toll charged on goods entering Strasbourg by river, and that toll was collected, in the register's own phrasing, in the shade of the ancient tree still standing on the spot. A local history of the quay identifies the older tree as an enormous walnut that failed to survive the hard winter of 1704 and had to be felled. The plane, it says, is its authentic successor. So the honest version: an ancient tree marked this corner of the Petite France by the 1660s, and today's plane, roughly 450 centimetres in girth and one of the oldest street trees in Strasbourg, is very probably the replacement rather than the survivor. Even the city's register hedges, saying only that this is perhaps that tree. It now shades a cafe terrace on the quay, which is a demotion from tax collection and a considerable improvement.