The Maple of Sokolovská Street

Two sources name this tree and they differ by two letters. The national register calls it javor cukrový, sugar maple, which is Acer saccharum. Slovak Wikipedia's own list of protected trees gives the binomial for that same row as Acer saccharinum, the silver maple. Both are North American, both were planted along European streets in the nineteenth century, and the difference is readable from the pavement. A silver maple's leaves are deeply cut and near-white underneath, so they flash pale when the wind turns them. Nobody has settled which of the two grows on Sokolovská. If you know your maples and you walk past, look up and tell us. What the two sources agree on is that it is worth keeping. The register lists it as the only specimen of its species of any real age in the district, which is why it was designated in the first place. That is a modest claim and an honest one. This is not an ancient tree, it is an unusual one that has been allowed to get old on a city street. No age has been recorded and no girth measured, so how long it has stood here is open too. It is about 1.5 kilometres from the plane in Budatín Park and 1.2 kilometres from the protected limes on Kysucká cesta. Three protected trees, one afternoon.