The Chene Josephine

Brussels' own heritage inventory calls this oak probably the oldest tree of any kind in the entire region, and its evidence is a single number: 6.05 metres around the trunk, measured at chest height. That circumference translates, through standard oak growth tables, to an age close to four hundred years, since no planting record exists for a tree this old growing in what was once simply called the Kersbeekbosch, a wood already named in a document from 1648, a full century before anyone thought to record individual trees within it. A 20th century industrialist built a chateau and pleasure pavilion on the land and renamed it Parc des Eperons d'Or, but the commune of Forest only acquired the grounds in 1979 and opened them to the public in 1980, as Parc Jacques Brel. The oak, already three and a half centuries old by then, barely noticed the paperwork. At roughly 20 metres tall with a canopy shaped by centuries of unhurried growth, it now shares its park with joggers, a playground and Brussels' newer housing developments, a working class commune's public oak older than most of the buildings standing around it put together.