Ancient Trees: the newest remarkable treesThe most remarkable ancient trees of the world's cities, newest first, each verified against its sources.https://ancienttrees.app/feed.xml2026-08-08T12:00:00ZThe Turkish Hazels of Resselpark, Viennahttps://ancienttrees.app/vienna/turkish-hazels-of-resselpark2026-08-08T12:00:00ZVienna protected these two trees for looking alike. Naturdenkmal Nr. 545, granted on 25 April 1972, covers a pair of Turkish hazels standing opposite the main entrance of the Technical University, and the reason...The Field Elm of Burggasse, Viennahttps://ancienttrees.app/vienna/field-elm-of-burggasse2026-08-08T12:00:00ZEurope lost most of its large elms in the second half of the twentieth century, which is reason enough to look at a field elm planted in 1915 and still standing. Ulmus minor was the species Dutch elm disease hit...The Judas Tree of the Altes AKH, Viennahttps://ancienttrees.app/vienna/judas-tree-of-the-altes-akh2026-08-08T12:00:00ZThis tree flowers straight out of its own trunk. In spring, before a single leaf opens, Cercis siliquastrum covers itself in rosy-pink flowers barely two centimetres across, and they push out not only from the twigs but...The Hackberry of the Parco degli Scipioni, Romehttps://ancienttrees.app/rome/hackberry-of-the-parco-degli-scipioni2026-08-08T12:00:00ZTwo official surveys measured this hackberry and agreed on its waist to within a centimetre: four metres around. They do not agree on its height. Italy's national monumental tree register records 20 metres. The Appia...The Holm Oak of Piazza Perin del Vaga, Romehttps://ancienttrees.app/rome/holm-oak-of-piazza-perin-del-vaga2026-08-08T12:00:00ZThe children who climbed this holm oak gave it its name. From the top they would shout "Anvedi da quassù se vede tutta Roma", Roman dialect for look, from up here you can see the whole of Rome, and the tree has been...The Chinaberry of Square Boucicaut, Parishttps://ancienttrees.app/paris/chinaberry-of-square-boucicaut2026-08-08T12:00:00ZHere is a subtropical tree holding its fruit through a Paris winter. Melia azedarach, the chinaberry, belongs to the warm belt running from India to China and is normally a Mediterranean planting; the French call it...The Caucasian Wingnut of Square d'Estienne d'Orves, Parishttps://ancienttrees.app/paris/caucasian-wingnut-of-square-destienne-dorves2026-08-08T12:00:00ZCome up the steps from the Trinite metro and it is right there, twenty-six metres of it, reported to be the oldest living Caucasian wingnut in France. Two independent sources give a planting date of 1862 and a trunk 3.8...The Old Hazel of Square Maurice-Gardette, Parishttps://ancienttrees.app/paris/old-hazel-of-square-maurice-gardette2026-08-08T12:00:00ZFrench regional television once ran a news piece written in this tree's own voice, headlined "I am 145, stop cracking my hazelnuts and let me age in peace". The grievance is real enough. Turkish hazel nuts are edible,...The Turkish Hazel of Square du Temple, Parishttps://ancienttrees.app/paris/turkish-hazel-of-square-du-temple2026-08-08T12:00:00ZMost people picture a hazel as a shrub they can see over. This one is sixteen metres tall with a trunk 235 centimetres around. Corylus colurna, the Turkish hazel, is the outsized relative of the nut-bearing hedge hazel,...The Plane of Square d'Ajaccio, Parishttps://ancienttrees.app/paris/plane-of-square-dajaccio2026-08-08T12:00:00ZFour metres ninety of trunk, in a square you can cross in twenty paces. The register gives this plane 490 centimetres around and 25 metres tall, and the one independent survey of Square d'Ajaccio quotes exactly the same...The Magnolia of Square d'Ajaccio, Parishttps://ancienttrees.app/paris/magnolia-of-square-dajaccio2026-08-08T12:00:00ZThis tree comes from the warm swamp forests of the American southeast, and it has grown to twelve metres in a small square off the Rue de Grenelle. Southern magnolia keeps its leaves all year, thick and glossy with a...The Twin Planes of Avenue Winston Churchill, Parishttps://ancienttrees.app/paris/twin-planes-of-avenue-winston-churchill2026-08-08T12:00:00ZA trunk five and a half metres around is a great deal of plane tree for a Paris street. Two of them stand about eleven metres apart on Avenue Winston Churchill, on the axis between the Grand Palais and the Petit Palais,...The Sequoia of the Champs-Élysées Gardens, Parishttps://ancienttrees.app/paris/sequoia-of-the-champs-elysees-gardens2026-08-08T12:00:00ZEurope had barely met this species when the tree went into the ground. Giant sequoias reached European gardens from California in the 1850s, and the fullest account of this one dates it to 1850, which would put it among...The Embankment Plane, Londonhttps://ancienttrees.app/london/embankment-plane2026-08-08T12:00:00ZThe tree that helped make London a city of planes is not a London Plane. It is an Oriental Plane, one of the two species crossed to produce the hybrid now growing down half the streets in the capital, and it stands...The Marylebone Elm, Londonhttps://ancienttrees.app/london/marylebone-elm2026-08-08T12:00:00ZDutch elm disease killed around 25 million British elms from the 1960s on, roughly three quarters of the country's population. This one was missed. It stands on the pavement of Marylebone High Street, more than 100 feet...The Dorchester Plane, Londonhttps://ancienttrees.app/london/dorchester-plane2026-08-08T12:00:00ZOne of the Great Trees of London stands at the front door of a hotel where a night costs more than most people's monthly rent, and you can walk up to it for nothing. The London Tree Forum and the Countryside Commission...The Amwell Street Fig, Londonhttps://ancienttrees.app/london/amwell-street-fig2026-08-08T12:00:00ZThis fig may have been planted as a teaching aid. It sprawls across the front of the former Clerkenwell Parochial Schools on Amwell Street, several stems rising from one rootstock and propped where the limbs have...The St Paul's Churchyard Planes, Londonhttps://ancienttrees.app/london/st-pauls-churchyard-planes2026-08-08T12:00:00ZFour planes stood on the north side of St Paul's churchyard until the Great Storm of 1987 took one of them down. The three that remain are, according to one detailed local history of the cathedral, over 250 years old,...The Mastic of Hort de l'Avi, Barcelonahttps://ancienttrees.app/barcelona/mastic-of-hort-de-lavi2026-08-08T12:00:00ZA mastic is supposed to stay a shrub. Pistacia lentiscus grows low and scrubby across the Mediterranean, the kind of plant nobody looks at twice, and this one never got the memo. Two of its main limbs run out nearly...The Ginkgo of the Hortus, Amsterdamhttps://ancienttrees.app/amsterdam/ginkgo-of-the-hortus2026-08-08T12:00:00ZGinkgo is the only surviving species of an entire order of plants, a lineage already old when the first dinosaurs appeared and one that outlived them by sixty-six million years. Everything else on that branch has been a...The Turner's Oak of the Hortus, Amsterdamhttps://ancienttrees.app/amsterdam/turners-oak-of-the-hortus2026-08-08T12:00:00ZThis oak does not drop its leaves in autumn. It holds them, dark and leathery, through the whole Dutch winter, and only lets go in spring when new growth physically pushes the old leaves off the twig. Turner's oak is a...The Shellbark Hickory of the Hortus, Amsterdamhttps://ancienttrees.app/amsterdam/shellbark-hickory-of-the-hortus2026-08-08T12:00:00ZThe Dutch tree foundation calls this the oldest shellbark hickory in the Netherlands. The city of Amsterdam records it as planted in 1950, which would rule that out. Both are describing the same tree in the same corner...The Twisted Catalpa of the Hortus, Amsterdamhttps://ancienttrees.app/amsterdam/twisted-catalpa-of-the-hortus2026-08-08T12:00:00ZThe trunk turns as it rises, a slow corkscrew that the national guide to Amsterdam's monumental trees singles out as the reason to stop. This is a southern catalpa, native to a small pocket of the southeastern United...The Coast Redwood of Artis, Amsterdamhttps://ancienttrees.app/amsterdam/coast-redwood-of-artis2026-08-08T12:00:00ZThe tallest tree species on earth has a specimen standing beside a planetarium in central Amsterdam. Coast redwoods pass 110 metres in the fog belt of northern California, where they take a serious share of their water...The Persian Ironwood of Artis, Amsterdamhttps://ancienttrees.app/amsterdam/persian-ironwood-of-artis2026-08-08T12:00:00ZArtis keeps more than eight hundred trees across two hundred species, and the man who looks after them picks this one. Jan de Jong, the park's tree specialist, calls the Persian ironwood his favourite and describes it...The Hackberries of the Aranciera, Romehttps://ancienttrees.app/rome/hackberries-of-the-aranciera2026-08-07T12:00:00ZA hackberry in the holm oak wood behind the Museo Carlo Bilotti carries a nickname rather than a certificate: locals call it il bagolaro del Seicento, the hackberry of the 1600s, though nobody has run the rings to prove...The Cypress of Piazza di Siena, Romehttps://ancienttrees.app/rome/cypress-of-piazza-di-siena2026-08-07T12:00:00ZEighteen cypresses once ringed Piazza di Siena when the arena was laid out in 1789, part of the original hedge and tree enclosure designed by architect Antonio Asprucci for what is now Rome's international horse show....The Chir Pine of Colle Oppio, Romehttps://ancienttrees.app/rome/chir-pine-of-colle-oppio2026-08-07T12:00:00ZThe roots of this pine have grown into Nero's palace. It stands on Colle Oppio directly above the Domus Aurea, and somewhere below it in the dark they have worked into the nymphaeum of Ulysses and Polyphemus.
It is not...The Podocarp of Piazza Vittorio, Romehttps://ancienttrees.app/rome/podocarp-of-piazza-vittorio2026-08-07T12:00:00ZItaly put this tree on its national monumental register in October 2025 for one reason: it should not be here. Podocarpus neriifolius grows wild in the forests of the Himalayan foothills and southeast Asia, and Rome...The Cedar of Lebanon of Villa Torlonia, Romehttps://ancienttrees.app/rome/cedar-of-lebanon-of-villa-torlonia2026-08-07T12:00:00ZNo cedar on Rome's monumental register is thicker than this one. Six metres around the trunk, 28 metres up, standing beside the staircase Giuseppe Valadier designed for the Casino Nobile. The surveyor who wrote its...