7. Survivor Sycamore

In the light of recent events on Armada Way in Plymouth, the city’s Survivor Sycamore takes on even greater significance.

Mar 30, 2023

Welcome to The Street Tree! This is the seventh in a series of pithy illustrated posts about great individual trees from Britain and Ireland. I’ll be posting at least one a week over the coming months.

Plymouth suffered dozens of German air raids during the Second World War. On the night of 21st March 1941, the Victorian Guildhall was reduced to rubble, but astonishingly, the sycamore planted right next to it survived. The Guildhall was reconstructed after the war, and the sycamore endures to this day, looking none the worse for the ordeals of the blitz and subsequent reconstruction.

Mercifully the Survivor Sycamore also survived the extraordinarily ill-conceived felling that took place at night on nearby Armada Way, a thoroughfare that is itself a symbol of Plymouth's postwar regeneration. The trees were planted as part of the grand twentieth century city plan, key to softening the modernist architecture and giving the city a humane feel. At the time they were removed, they had only just started to reach maturity and could so easily have been retained to great effect in the latest regeneration of the city centre while also providing all the environmental service only mature trees offer.

Species details

Sycamore
Acer pseudoplatanus

Where to find it

Guildhall Square, Plymouth PL1 2BJ
///stem.ears.lush | 50.369920, -4.1414600

Sycamore notes

Sycamores are often thought of as weed species, their propensity to reproduce with gay abandon is seen as an annoyance by many. But sycamores can become stately trees, and with so many pests and diseases spelling trouble for species like oak and ash, we should perhaps embrace this species and rethink our relationship with it.