The Horse Chestnut by the Herenstraat Bridge

The interesting thing about an old horse chestnut in the Netherlands is that it is still there. Bleeding canker, a bacterial infection that leaves rust-coloured ooze running down the bark, has been working through Dutch chestnuts since the early 2000s and has cost cities thousands of them; the most famous one in the country, the tree Anne Frank watched from the back of the annexe in Amsterdam, was already failing when a storm brought it down in 2010. This one has stood by the Herenstraat bridge through all of it. The register dates its planting to between 1910 and 1920, which makes it roughly 106 to 116 years old. It is also not a solitary stop. An Oriental plane already on this map stands at the same bridge in Lepelenburg, the bastion turned park ground around 1860, so you get two monumental trees and the water between them in one pause. Horse chestnuts perform twice a year without being asked. White candles held upright over the whole crown in May, then spiked green cases in autumn that split on the path and hand out conkers to anyone who bends down. The register calls it a white horse chestnut. Our own record keeps it at genus level, because the red-flowered hybrid is common in parks too, and nobody has confirmed which stands here.