A mayor planted this cedar in the summer of 1820 because his son had just been born. Jean-Edouard Naville was mayor of Eaux-Vives, then still a commune in its own right rather than a district of Geneva, and he put the tree into the ground on his Montchoisy estate to mark the arrival of Emile. Two centuries later the boy is long gone and the tree is 722 centimetres round. Where it ended up is the other half of the story. The Route de Frontenex now runs past it, the address is simply opposite number 53, and the ground around it is road and building rather than lawn. Tribune de Genève, surveying the trees that tell Geneva's history, found it holding up well in the middle of all that concrete, and the cantonal register agrees: vitality good, development stage senescent, an old tree still doing its job rather than a failing one. The 1820 date is unusually solid for a tree this age. Registers here often record a planting as the first of January, which is a filing habit rather than a record, but this one is backed by a named man, a named son and a stated season. It is a birthday present that outlived everyone at the party, standing at a kerb on a busy road out of town.
In fruit
September to November: upright barrel cones that sit on the branches like eggs
The line is our estimate of how much there is to see, not a measurement. Typical for this species where this tree stands; exact weeks shift with the year.
Route de Frontenex, opposite no. 53, VillereuseA very large cedar standing at the kerb opposite number 53 Route de Frontenex, with road and building right up to it rather than lawn.
Free, stands at the roadside, visible and reachable at any time
Bus to Frontenex or a 15-20 minute walk from the centre
Sources
Where the facts on this page come from.
- In the official register: Inventaire des arbres isolés (SITG, République et canton de Genève), no. 231592
- sitg.ge.ch
- tdg.ch
