The Plane of Park Hoekenburg

One of the finds pulled out of the ground in this corner of Voorburg was a wooden post cut from an oak felled in the year 212, a date read off its rings. The excavation that produced it, in 2008, was digging up Forum Hadriani, the Roman port town raised on an older settlement of the Cananefates. The Dutch monumental tree register does not give the plane growing on that ground a nickname. It files it as the plane on the Roman foundation, and notes that it is the thickest plane in South Holland. The age comes from the same register and stays a band: planted somewhere between 1700 and 1750, which puts the tree at roughly 280 to 330 years. Nothing in the record narrows that, and a single confident figure would be precision the surveyor never claimed. The band is wide enough to be certain of one thing, which is that this plane was rooted here well before the Netherlands became a kingdom. When the park was later renovated, the tree was carefully protected. Planes shed their bark in plates all year round, so no month is the wrong one, and the trunk is the reason to come. Know before you set out that this is Voorburg, in the municipality of Leidschendam-Voorburg, a few kilometres east of central The Hague. It is a ride out of the city rather than a walk across it.