The Black Locust of ul. Żaryna

This tree is 160 centimetres round and five metres tall, which is the wrong shape for a black locust. The species normally runs to twenty metres or more on a trunk that thick. A short heavy stem like this usually means the crown came off at some point, to a storm or to a saw, and the tree carried on from whatever was left. The register records the two numbers and not the story behind them, so that reading is inference rather than fact. Robinia pseudoacacia is North American, named after the French royal gardener Jean Robin and planted across Europe from the seventeenth century onward for its tolerance of poor sandy ground, which Poland has in quantity. It escaped the gardens long ago and now grows half wild here, which makes it an unlikely candidate for legal protection. Warsaw protected this one anyway, on 24 September 2014, on a quiet Mokotow street with no park attached to it. We have not dated it. Black locust grows fast, and a tree that lost its top and regrew from the stump keeps no honest record in its girth. Come in June. Locust flowers hang in white pea-flowered bunches and the scent carries far enough to find the tree with your eyes shut, which on a street like this is the most practical direction we can give you.