9. Turkey Mill Baobab

They don’t come much fatter than the prodigiously-girthed Baobab plane growing in a Maidstone business park.

Welcome to The Street Tree! This is the ninth 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.

The Kentish town of Maidstone is well endowed with baobab plane trees, and indeed the fattest of all these odd trees can be encountered in an unlikely corner of town. The vast tree, resembling a grotesque flailing octopus, grows at Turkey Mill, a former paper mill and now a business park. Consigned to the car park, the Turkey Mill Baobab can be found in a walled enclosure close to the River Len.

Species details

‘Baobab' London Plane
Platanus x hispanica 'Baobab'

Where to find it

Turkey Mill, Ashford Road, Maidstone ME14 5PP
///moth.ramp.alarm | 51.270874, 0.537552

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Baobab plane notes

Baobab planes are an unusual cultivar of the familiar London plane. Their defining characteristic are huge, rotund trunks from which relatively short branches twist upwards. They are rare but memorable.

Baobab planes have leaves more deeply indented than other London planes, but they hold their fruits in pairs, a sure sign that they are indeed a cultivar of London rather than oriental plane.

Other London plane posts

5. Toon Wall Plane