What is the oldest tree in Freiburg?
Freiburg's oldest tree, as far as recorded ages go, is the pair of large-leaved limes on the Kapellenweg up the Lorettoberg, beside the Lorettokapelle. Local tradition puts their planting in 1645, roughly 380 years ago, and they were the first entry on the city's natural monument register when it opened in 1954. The 1645 date is tradition rather than a measurement, and four of Freiburg's seven trees carry no recorded age at all, so an older one cannot be ruled out.
Only three of Freiburg's seven trees carry an age, and each rests on a different kind of evidence. The Kapellenweg limes, at roughly 380 years, rest on local tradition: a planting in 1645, in the last years of the Thirty Years' War, beside the path to a chapel built in 1657 to give thanks for the peace. No single source ties this exact pair to that foundation, so the date stays a tradition. The Starkenstraße giant sequoia, at roughly 130 to 150 years, is dated by the Gründerzeit planting window a newspaper account places it in, not by a ring count. Waldtraut vom Mühlwald is the only one with a written planting date, 1913, which makes it about 116 years old and, at 67.85 metres, Germany's tallest tree. The Sedanquartier Weeping Beech, the Bernhardstraße Ginkgo, the Alexandereiche and the Kartaus Plane carry no age in any source found, and this page says so rather than guessing. The limes stand a twenty to twenty-five minute walk uphill from the Altstadt through Wiehre, on a path open at all times.
One of Freiburg's trees also appears in Autumn Worth the Trip.