The Plane of the Badhuiswal

This plane is either about 160 years old or about 75, and the two official sources may not be describing the same tree at all. The national register carries a gewone plataan on the Badhuiswal planted between 1860 and 1870, owned by the municipality, rated monumental. Zwolle's own 2024 list carries a plane on the Badhuiswal planted in 1950, owned by the municipality, rated a tier lower at waardevol. Same street, same owner, same species, ninety years of daylight between them. The Badhuiswal is a short quay and it holds several registered planes and oaks, so the likeliest reading is that two surveys walked past two different trees. The dating decides what it has seen. On the earlier one it went in while Zwolle was pulling down its old defences and rebuilding the ground as a ring of water and planting, and it has stood on this quay through every war since. On the later one it is a postwar tree, planted into a city five years out of occupation. Girth would settle it in about a minute, because a plane of 160 years and a plane of 75 are not remotely the same size, and nobody has published a measurement for this one. If you walk past with a tape, tell us what it says.