The Hafenzufahrtsstraße Black Poplar
The city's own tree inventory measures this black poplar at 5.95 metres round, and it stands on a harbour access road. The next big trees the inventory records beside it are two lindens, at 4.10 metres and 1.80. Vienna made it Natural Monument 96 on 3 November 1938, eight months after the annexation by Nazi Germany. The stated reason was not the girth but the crown: it was protected "especially for its beautiful crown formation". Everything the city has been through since, it has stood through on this one spot in Freudenau. That is also the worry. Black poplars are not long-lived trees, and a second protected black poplar nearby, at the Freudenauer Wasser, has already been removed at the end of its life. The newest photograph of this one we have found dates from 2014. What tells us it still stands is the inventory, which still carries a 5.95 metre black poplar within three metres of the monument's registered point. Nobody has dated it, and the city's records give no planting year. If you know how old it is, tell us. Be ready for an unglamorous walk: an industrial road through the port district, lorries and warehouses, and the tree on the street edge, seen from the pavement. It is worth it for the trunk alone. If you go, tell us how the crown is looking.
catkins on bare branches, red on the male treesfemale trees release their seed in cottony tuftsyellow
The line is our estimate of how much there is to see, not a measurement. Typical for this species where this tree stands; exact weeks shift with the year.
Hafenzufahrtsstraße 50, Leopoldstadt (2nd district)You can recognise it by the trunk, close to six metres round, far thicker than the lindens near it. It stands on the street edge in front of Hafenzufahrtsstraße 50, on the harbour road.
Free. Roadside tree on a public street in the Freudenau harbour district; view it from the pavement.
Nearest stop not verified.
Sources
Where the facts on this page come from.
