Thursday 26 September 2013

The Great Plane

Within the gardens here at Mottisfont we have some beautiful, old and very interesting trees and today I would like to focus on one in particular - The Great Plane.











The pictures above show you the tree in question and I have to start by saying that this tree is nothing short of gargantuan! The pictures really don't do it justice. It currently stands at 42 metres high and has a circumference of well over 12 metres. I realise It's hard to visualise if you haven't been lucky enough to see it but hopefully you can appreciate that it's simply massive. I can easily say that this is one of the most impressive trees I have ever set eyes on.

Unusually we have no planting record for this (this really is unusual as normally every planting is religiously recorded) however with the help of drawings and garden records we can say that it was definitely planted between 1722 and 1742. Within the gardening team here we believe that the correct year was 1724 but there is no concrete evidence. This is a 'London Plane' or Plantanus x Hispanica, so called a London Plane due to the mass planting of it along the streets of London, but nowadays you will see it planted in most towns and cities. The reason for this is because it is extremely tolerant of pollution and pruning.

    

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