This old, old man in Walpole Park, here in Ealing, London, is one of my favorite trees. I shot the pic with a wide lens, so the length of his whale-long limb, supported by a steel crutch, is exaggerated – but only slightly.

While Europe and Europeans burned in the last century, this tree was well into middle age, quietly alive in this very spot, lifting tons of water out of the earth, exhaling tons of oxygen into the air.

Trees are meant to grow old.