The Plane Tree of the Botanic Garden

No tree in this garden throws a bigger shadow. The plane standing against the botanic garden's western wall spreads a crown 26 metres across, wider than any other tree the regional register measures here, over a trunk 4.16 metres around and 31.4 metres of height. In a city that spends five months of the year hunting for shade, that is the entire appeal, and the garden's own writers single it out for casting the deepest shade in the collection. Planes carry a reputation in Spanish cities as an allergy tree, and the same writers push back on it in this tree's case, calling the worry overstated. Platanus hispanica is a hybrid, planted across Europe since the seventeenth century precisely because it does this: grow fast, tolerate bad air and compacted ground, shed its bark in plates and produce a heavy canopy within a few decades. Which is also why nobody bothered to write down when this one was planted. The register measures it and gives no year, the garden's catalogue names the species and not the date, and the tree itself is not telling. If a planting record exists, we would like to see it. It sits at the far western side of the garden, past the Silk Floss Tree, and the walk between the two takes about a minute.