The West 20th Avenue Spanish Chestnut

There are two Spanish chestnuts on West 20th Avenue, and the heritage-listed one is the smaller. The city's street-tree inventory gives it a trunk 104.1 centimetres in diameter, about 3.3 metres round, and 19.8 metres of height; the unlisted chestnut a block away at number 2089 is thicker, at 124.5 centimetres. Fame and girth do not always travel together. The city cannot quite agree where the listed one lives. Its heritage register records a Spanish Chestnut at 2001 West 20th Avenue. Its separate street-tree survey records a Spanish chestnut at 2003, one house number along, and finds no other chestnut at this end of the block. Almost certainly the same tree, counted twice by two departments working from two sets of paperwork. Almost certainly is the honest phrase: this pass could not settle it on the ground. Castanea sativa is the sweet chestnut of Europe, which Vancouver's register files under its other name. This one grows on a city boulevard on the public right-of-way, free to walk up to at any hour. In October the spiny burs split and the nuts come down, which is the moment worth timing the walk for. Nobody has recorded its age. Neither city dataset carries a planting date and no independent account of the tree turned up. If you have lived on the block long enough to know, tell us.