The Plane of Place Anatole France

Toulouse's register calls this tree Platanus x hispanica and this page calls it Platanus x acerifolia, and both are right. The London plane is a hybrid of an American and an Oriental plane that appeared in seventeenth century Europe without anyone writing down where, and the argument over whether to name it after Spain or after London has never been settled. Botanists still use both, for the same tree. This one stands on Place Anatole France, on the city's own remarkable tree list and nowhere else. That list is the whole file: no age, no measurements, no independent source, and a record of the adult development stage rather than the register's oldest category, so this is a substantial mature plane and not a veteran. One thing worth stating plainly, because a search will turn it up. Toulouse has a well known plane with an enormous burl growing out of its trunk in the Jardin Royal, and this is not that tree. No source connects the two, and this page does not either. What this one offers is the ordinary excellence of the species: a wide clean crown thrown over a busy square, and bark that sheds in plates all summer instead of letting a century of city grime build up on it.