The Silver Maple of Jazdów

An expressway opened 30 metres from this maple in July 1974. Four months later, in November, Warsaw declared the tree a protected natural monument. Nobody wrote down whether the two facts are connected. The road, Trasa Lazienkowska, is still there, cut straight through the middle of the city, and so is the tree. It stands on skwer Stefana Kisielewskiego, a small named square beside the Na Rozdrozu cafe in Srodmiescie: a square, a cafe and a tree, which is a generous amount of direction from a register that mostly gives street numbers. The university botanical garden, whose twenty-three protected trees were designated the same year, is a couple of hundred metres away, so the two make one walk. What the register does not give is a single measurement. No girth, no height, which is unusual and means no age either, because there is nothing to derive one from. What it names is the species, Acer saccharinum, an American maple with leaves cut nearly to the midrib and silvered on the back, and a date, 8 November 1974. A photograph from 2021 shows it standing and in leaf. So this entry has a hole in the middle of it. If you get a tape around the trunk, or you know when the tree went in, send us the number and it goes on the page.