My few precious days in Amsterdam was spent walking the canals and looking at trees. At first, I wasn’t really sure what I was looking at since the trees were pretty generic to my untrained eye, but they were really hard to miss.

The city’s canals are lined with trees and from what I can tell, the same specie of tree. A quick search online told me they were Elms (Ulmus). In fact there are some 40 species of Elms consisting of more than 5,000 individuals growing in the centre of the city, according to this fellow treelover.

I can’t really tell the species apart, but am somewhat disappointed with their size. From literature, I had always imagine Elms to be ancient and mysterious, kind of like the Chinese Banyans in Hong Kong. These were not, but are more like junior representatives of a professional team.

That said, the Elms do make an impression, especially when they line the entirety of the canals. It’s just hard to get excited on any single one individual.

Categories:Elm (ulmus), International, Street trees, tree walks, treelover, urbantreesTags: #photooftheday #urbantrees #amsterdam #elms