The Field Maple of the Bartholomeibrug

Every other maple in this city is an immigrant. The field maple is the only one native to the Netherlands, and it normally spends its life as hedge material, cut back over and over before anyone finds out what it could have become. This one was left alone from somewhere between 1860 and 1870, which makes it roughly 156 to 166 years old. It is still small. Thirteen metres tall, a trunk 160 centimetres around, both figures taken by the canal-side survey of Utrecht's monumental trees. On an oak those numbers would be forgettable; for a field maple they are close to the ceiling of what the species does. What makes it worth stopping for is the shape. It grew bent and low on the south side of the Bartholomeibrug, leaning off the Pelmolenweg bank and out over the water rather than upward, a habit the survey singles out as unusual. The tree gives away its own name if you look at the twigs, where young shoots grow corky ridges along their sides, and at the leaves, small and five-lobed with rounded rather than pointed tips. In October the whole thing turns butter yellow above the canal. A hedge plant that was never cut, given a century and a half and a good spot on the water. That is the entire story here, and it is enough.