The Puławska Street Pear

Warsaw protects a pear tree that grows out of a pavement. It stands at ul. Pulawska 8a in Mokotow, on one of the city's main southern arteries, set in the sidewalk itself rather than behind any wall or railing, and the national register of natural monuments has listed it since 12 December 2001. A pear is a domestic fruit tree. It belongs to gardens and orchards, and how this one came to be standing in front of four lanes of traffic is not recorded anywhere. Mokotow is unusual in carrying two protected pears at once: this one, and Ciechomski's a kilometre to the south, whose supposed origin story historians have spent years picking apart. Nobody has dated this tree. The register gives the year it was protected and nothing about the tree's own years, and Wikidata lists it at 11 metres tall with a trunk 153 centimetres round, both figures carrying no source attached to them at all, which makes them a starting point rather than a measurement. The most recent hard proof it is standing is a photograph taken on the pavement beside it in May 2021. If you have a planting date, or a tape measure and five minutes, tell us and the numbers go on the page.