What is the oldest tree in Brussels?

Chene Josephine's age comes from its girth rather than any planting record: at 6.05 metres in circumference, measured at chest height, foresters use growth-rate tables for pedunculate oak to arrive at a figure close to four centuries, old enough that Brussels' own heritage inventory calls it probably the oldest oak anywhere in the region. No document names a planting date, since the ground it grows on was still part of the Kersbeekbosch, a wood already recorded under that name in 1648, long before anyone thought to write down individual trees within it. The clearest challenger for oldest is the Kasterlinde, a lime tree marking the exact point where three communes meet, documented on maps since 1777 and therefore provably at least two and a half centuries old, though its estimated true age, worked out from girth, comes out younger than the oak's. Parc Jacques Brel itself is a recent public space, only opened by the commune of Forest in 1980 after decades as a private estate, but the oak inside it is the oldest living thing within reach of a Brussels metro station. It costs nothing to visit.