The Second Plane of Fer a Cheval

The plane avenues of the Canal du Midi are being cut down. A fungal canker with no treatment reached them in the early 2000s and tens of thousands of trees have been felled and replaced with other species along a waterway that begins in Toulouse, which is the largest thing to have happened to plane trees in this region in two centuries. City planes like this one are not part of that avenue and not part of that programme, worth knowing before you assume every plane in Toulouse is under sentence. This one stands on the Fer a Cheval sports ground in Saint-Cyprien, on the city's remarkable tree list, about a hundred and seventy metres from the Judas tree, which makes those two the closest thing the list offers to a short walk. The rest are scattered across the city as separate errands. The register records the species and the position and adds nothing: no age, no girth, no independent source, and the adult development stage rather than its oldest. The species became the standard tree of industrial-era boulevards for practical reasons, chief among them that it shrugs off hard pollarding year after year. Same access note as its neighbour: this is a sports ground, not a garden, so expect a running track.