London Planetree Exfoliating Bark Emerges - May 2025

One of the public gardens that continues to stir my imagination - despite not visiting in a couple of years - are the Luxembourg Gardens in Paris.  We've revisited the gardens a few times over the years and I always come away with ideas, inspiration and plans that we can incorporate into our garden.  

From annual planting patterns to espaliered trees to garden furniture to cocoa bean mulch to path edging to the long-desired Orangerie Box to a tree species that I planted because we saw it there:  The London Planetree.  

In the Summer of 2019, I posted this photo showing the pair of columns of very mature London Planetrees that are planted around a pond/water feature and talked about how I wanted to bring this look to our garden.  

The next Spring, we were in the midst of the early days of COVID lockdowns, so I would wander to the big box nursery early in the morning to see what they had on hand - only to discover one of these London Planetrees.  I'm sure they've been there all along, but up until my trip to Paris the previous year, I never was looking for them.

The most-striking feature of the London Plane tree is the bark.  From that post in 2020 when I bought the tree:

...bark that exfoliates to reveal patches that may be creamy white, yellow, or olive-colored. The signature ornamental feature of this huge tree is its brown bark, which exfoliates in irregular pieces to reveal creamy white inner bark.

Up until now, we haven't seen any signs of this signature ornamental feature.  Until now:

That's the trunk above doing what it is supposed to do:  exfoliate.  Pretty neat to see this start to occur.

2025 marks the sixth growing season - planted in early 2020.  Here's a post from last Summer showing how tall it has grown over the years.  

Below is another photo showing off the trunk and the yet-to-leaf-out tree.  You can see those creamy white/grey spots starting to dot the trunk:

Thinking about the success of the various big box store trees, I'd say that the Bald Cypress in front (IB2DWs) is by-far...the most successful.  Same with the Lindens.  But this London Planetree is climbing the ranks.