What is the oldest tree in Concoret?
The oldest tree near Concoret is the Guillotin Oak, a pedunculate oak on the edge of the Forêt de Paimpont estimated at 500 to 1,000 years old. Its trunk measures 9.6 metres round under a 16-metre crown, and it has carried its own listing as a national remarkable tree since 2017. It stands beside a public path near the hamlet of La Rue-Éon, free to see, with a fence added in 2019 to protect its roots.
A priest hid from the Revolution here, or so the story insists, and Pierre-Paul Guillotin's name replaced the tree's older one, the Chêne des Rues-Éon, sometime in the 20th century. Whether he actually sheltered in or beside the trunk is tradition rather than record. The age is genuinely disputed: French sources place it anywhere between 500 and 1,000 years, with both the tenth and fifteenth centuries put forward as its likely start, and nobody has settled it. What can be measured is the trunk, 9.6 metres round at its widest. In 2017 the national register of remarkable trees, A.R.B.R.E.S., gave the tree its own listing, independent of the forest's Arthurian reputation. The commune of Concoret bought it in 2000, and the Office National des Forêts has kept it standing since with synthetic bark patches and branch supports, work that shows rather than hides. A fence went up in 2019 to keep feet off the roots, but the oak stands beside a public path and is fully visible from it, one specific, named tree in a forest that has plenty of unnamed ones.
See more themed collections of remarkable trees.