Ancient trees in France

The Robinier of Square Rene-Viviani in Paris was planted in 1601 by Jean Robin, herbalist to Henri IV, from seed the naturalist John Tradescant sent from the Appalachians, before the Mayflower sailed and before the genus that now carries Robin's name even existed. That precision runs through France's other oldest trees, most raised from seed by royal gardeners and university botanists rather than found growing wild: a Cedar of Lebanon that legend says crossed the Channel tucked inside a botanist's hat, a plane tree named for the naturalist Buffon who ran the garden that raised it. Seven cities carry that botanical lineage, Paris alongside Lyon's, Nice's, Bordeaux's, Strasbourg's, Toulouse's and Rouen's own plantings. The rest of the map is single-tree destinations of a different kind: a Norman oak with two working chapels built into its hollow trunk, a Breton oak on the edge of Broceliande, a hollow Calvados yew wide enough to hold thirty people, an oak in Ille-et-Vilaine covered in devotional offerings since 1792, a Weppes lime cited to a 1490 deed that outlasted a chateau and a world war, a solitary Lot-et-Garonne oak that survived a 2022 trunk fissure the year after being named the country's Tree of the Year. French ancient trees tend to come with an actual planting year rather than a growth-ring guess, because someone with a reputation to protect wrote the date down. 35 places mapped so far, 125 trees.