The Oldest Tree in Every Country We Map

Fifteen countries, one tree each: the oldest verified specimen this site has found in every country it currently maps. Some claims are as solid as a tree gets, an oak whose ring count nearly matches a city's own founding record. Others are genuinely disputed, and say so rather than rounding up. What they share is a place you can actually walk to and stand in front of. Start with the most contested of them all, an Athens olive whose age depends entirely on who you ask.

Athens

The Olive Tree of Pisistratus 300-2,500 years (disputed)

Officially attested at over 2,500 years by the Hellenic Archaeological Society in 1919, a figure modern olive-dating methods can't support with confidence. Presented honestly as a 300 to 2,500 year range rather than the eye-catching single number.

London

The Totteridge Yew 2000 years

The oldest living thing in London by a wide margin: already ancient when the Romans built Londinium two thousand years ago, over a millennium older than the 13th century church built beside it.

Istanbul

The Oldest Plane of Bahçeköy 1,300-1,400 years

Istanbul's oldest living thing predates the city's Ottoman name by seven centuries, an Oriental plane inside a university forestry research station with a trunk 4.5 metres across.

Kyoto

The Heian Cedar of Katanami about 1,200 years

Said to have been alive when the Heian-kyo palace it is named for was first built, standing in forest that was imperial timber land for centuries.

Berlin

Dicke Marie 500-900 years (disputed)

Older than Berlin itself: when the city got its first written mention in 1237, this oak in the Tegel Forest had likely already been growing for over a century. How much older it has grown since stays a genuine, unresolved dispute.

Dublin

Dean's Tree 600 years

Local tradition puts this yew past seven hundred years; a more cautious girth-only estimate still lands past five hundred. Either figure makes it older than the house whose garden it now shares, built in 1710.

Vienna

Stock im Eisen 600+ years

Not really a tree anymore: the 2.19 metre midsection of a spruce that started growing around 1400, felled after forty years, and spent the roughly 500 years since being hammered full of nails by travelling craftsmen for luck.

Seville

The Ombú of La Cartuja 500 years

Said to have come from seeds Hernando Colon, son of Christopher Columbus, brought back from South America around 1529 and planted in his own private arboretum.

Lyon

The Atlas Cedar of Parc de la Chapelle locally claimed at 500 years, botanically disputed

The reason its park exists in its current shape: Parc de la Chapelle's open lawn and paths were arranged around this single cedar rather than the other way round. Its locally claimed 500 year age is botanically disputed.

Lisbon

The Olive Trees of Santo Amaro 457 years

Four olive trees outside a small round chapel that have outlived every Portuguese king since before the Braganza dynasty existed, dated to about 457 years by the city's own classification records.

New York

The Queens Giant 350-450 years

Already centuries old when New Amsterdam was still a Dutch trading post, and unlike almost every other tree on this list, nobody planted it: a wild tulip poplar and the tallest carefully measured tree in New York City.

Rome

Adonis 425 years

The largest survivor of eleven trees Cardinal Scipione Borghese planted here four centuries ago, a vast hollow-trunked oriental plane at the entrance to what is now called the Valley of the Plane Trees.

Brussels

The Chene Josephine close to 400 years

Brussels' own heritage inventory calls this oak probably the oldest tree of any kind in the entire region, an age derived from a single number: 6.05 metres around the trunk.

Amsterdam

The Cycad of the Hortus 300 years

Already growing in South Africa when Amsterdam's Hortus Botanicus bought it in 1850, an Eastern Cape giant cycad the two have been growing together ever since, kept potted under glass.

Prague

The Beethoven Plane estimated 200-300 years

The thickest protected tree in Prague, trunk seven and a half metres around. Its most famous story, that Beethoven rested beneath it in 1796, is almost certainly false, but the tree itself is real enough.