What is the oldest tree in Dordrecht?
The oldest tree in Dordrecht is a black locust near the S. van Hoogstratensingel entrance of Park Merwestein. This one does not need estimating: research carried out by the municipality in September 2020 put it at 300 to 325 years old, which matches the national register's planting band of 1700 to 1750. That is unusually solid ground for an age on this site, where most figures are a decade-wide band from a register and nothing more. Black locust is a North American species that reached Europe in the early seventeenth century, so a tree planted here around 1700 was among the first generation of them in the country.
Ages here come from the Landelijk Register Monumentale Bomen, which records a planting decade rather than a year, so most figures on this page are bands rather than measurements. The Merwestein black locust is the exception and says so: the city investigated it in September 2020 and arrived at 300 to 325 years. The register is the 2024 edition and is the single source for the other six, which is why they are flagged. Several of these trees are recorded as older than the ground they stand in, which is a pattern rather than a coincidence: the silver maple in the Weizigtpark was standing in a meadow before the park was laid out around it in 1947, and the plane at Dordwijk belongs to a country estate begun about 1635. Read the access line on the Sorghvliet plane before setting out: Dordwijk is private ground south of the city, even though the register records it as visitable. Where a pin is marked approximate we know the park and not the trunk, which on an estate of that size is a real difference.
See more themed collections of remarkable trees.