The Botanical Garden Plane Trees

Five plane trees in Geneva's botanical garden were already mature enough to appear on a cantonal cadastral map in 1728, nearly two centuries before the garden itself moved onto the land they stand on. The Conservatoire et Jardin botaniques relocated here from Parc des Bastions in 1905, onto the former Ariana estate that property heir Gustave Revilliod had left to the city, and inherited these five trees as a ready-made avenue rather than planting anything itself. City gardeners since have deliberately left them alone: unlike Geneva's street plane trees, pruned hard every winter into tight pollarded shapes, the botanical garden's five were allowed to spread their branches naturally, the difference between a tree kept small for a pavement and one left to become what a 300-year-old plane actually looks like. Botanists have reclassified them more than once; they currently go by Platanus x hispanica, having previously been labelled Platanus x acerifolia, the taxonomy shifting even as the trees themselves have not changed in decades. The central avenue they form is still the garden's spine, a shaded walk near the entrance from chemin de l'Impératrice, in the Nations district a short tram ride from the city centre.