The Black Locust of Park Merwestein

Somebody actually checked. In September 2020 the municipality investigated this tree and put it at 300 to 325 years old, which is a far better answer than almost any tree on this site can offer, and it agrees with the national register's independent band of 1700 to 1750. What makes the number remarkable is the species. Black locust is North American, from the Appalachians, and it reached Europe at the start of the seventeenth century, named after Jean Robin, the French royal gardener who is credited with planting the first one in Paris. A specimen planted in Dordrecht around 1700 belonged to the first wave of them in this country, when the tree was still an expensive curiosity rather than the roadside coloniser it later became. It has aged the way black locusts do, which is dramatically. The bark on an old one turns into deep, twisting, rope-like ridges, the trunk usually leans or forks, and the wood is so rot-resistant that the tree keeps standing in a state that would have finished anything else. In late May and early June it hangs with white pea flowers that smell strongly of honey. Three hundred years and it still does that every year.