What is the oldest tree in Bangkok?

Bangkok's oldest documented trees are five Thai ironwoods planted along Khlong Lot behind Wat Ratchabophit, dated to the reign of King Rama I between 1782 and 1809, making them more than 217 years old. The more precisely dated Bodhi tree of Wat Saket, planted in 1818 from a cutting carried back from Sri Lanka, is about 208 years old, the runner-up by exact record.

The ironwoods' age is a range rather than a fixed year, since no single record dates their planting to a specific day, only to King Rama I's reign, which ran from 1782 to 1809. Even the low end of that range makes them older than Wat Saket's Bodhi tree, whose 1818 planting is dated to the exact year but falls after Rama I's death. That makes the ironwoods the oldest by any reasonable reading of the evidence, even though the Bodhi tree is, ironically, the more precisely documented of the two. The two Bodhi trees at Wat Phra Kaew and Wat Benchamabophit are younger still, planted in 1864 and 1900 respectively, but carry the most exact dates of any tree on this list, down to the year a specific king planted a specific sapling. Both survived long enough to answer a different question about the city than most 'oldest tree' claims do elsewhere: this is a capital where the recorded age of its oldest trees tracks almost exactly with the age of the city itself, founded in 1782, because almost nothing standing here predates Bangkok.

Read the full story of The Ironwoods of Khlong Lot, or see all 5 remarkable ancient trees in Bangkok.

See more themed collections of remarkable trees.