“Baobab” Plane Trees in Faversham
There are four Plane Trees In Plane Tree Court against the churchyard of St Mary of Charity. They have bulbous distortions in the bark of their trunks.
William Masters, the Victorian nurseryman based in Canterbury, included Platanus orientalis in his catalogues. The Natural History Museum Identification Service advises that they are a clone of the London Plane (Platanus x hispanica), suffering from a viral infection. The common name is Baobab Plane.
Details of the Canterbury trees are here
The tree on the grounds of Canterbury Cathedral has a plaque and is labelled as an “Oriental plane”. The plaque reads: “This tree was supplied in the 1820s by William Masters, a Victorian nurseryman from Canterbury.
Sadie Palmer has plotted the six Canterbury “Baobab” Planes on a map of Canterbury and identified a cruciform.
Fern Alder reports that there is one outside Chart Mills on the Westbrook and many at Belmont too.#
