The Ash Trees of Park Wielkopolski

One set of papers, two trees. When Warsaw protected the ashes of Park Wielkopolski on 31 July 1973 it wrote them up as a single natural monument: two European ashes, both 29 metres tall, one 430 centimetres round and the other 398. They stand together about 50 metres in from ul. Filtrowa, and anyone walking up to them sees a pair rather than two separate errands, which is how the register saw them as well. The trees were protected a decade before the ground they grow on. Park Wielkopolski was laid out in 1938 to a design by Zygmunt Hellwig and Leon Danielewicz, and went onto the register of monuments in 1983; the ashes had already been protected since 1973. Nothing anywhere records when they were planted. If you have seen a planting record for this park, tell us. Ash is one of the easier trees to read out of season. The bark is smooth and grey on a young stem and finely ridged with age, the leaves are made of paired leaflets along a central rib, and the winter buds are matt black and blunt, which no other tree in this park offers. A third natural monument, a poplar of an uncertain species, stands about 85 metres away and has its own entry now (war_028). The pair of ashes is still what to walk in for.