The Servaasbolwerk Plane

Two dates exist for this plane, and the register that tracks it admits as much rather than picking one. The municipality's own planting list gives 1835, the year Jan David Zocher jr began laying out the Singelplantsoen ring parks this tree still stands in; an earlier entry from the Bomenstichting, the Dutch tree conservation foundation, instead recorded 1900 to 1910, a figure its own more recent register update calls probably a guess. A gap of sixty five years between two sources that both claim to know is unusual enough to state plainly rather than smooth over. What is not in dispute is the tree itself: a London plane standing opposite house number 2 on Servaasbolwerk, part of the same bastion parkland chain as the Zocher Plane mapped separately nearby, and old enough either way to be one of the historic ring's mature specimens. No girth has been recorded. Whichever date is right, the tree has stood through most or all of the twentieth century on a stretch of parkland built from a demolished city wall, watching the bastion go from defensive earthwork to quiet residential green space. Free, public, a few minutes' walk from Zonnenburg.