The Sécheron Plane

Thirty-eight metres of plane tree stands in a green space off the Avenue de France, and the harder question is which green space. The avenue borders several in Sécheron, Mon Repos and the Perle du Lac among them, and nothing found so far names the ground this trunk actually stands on. The coordinates are exact. Only the name of the park is missing. The tree is not in doubt. The cantonal register gives it 636 centimetres of girth, 38 metres of height and a crown spreading 33 metres, in good health. For scale, the plane in the middle of Place du Cirque, the largest in the city centre, measures 425 centimetres. This one is half as thick again and taller, and almost nobody writes about it. Nor does anyone date it. The register's planting field is simply empty, so the age here comes from comparing girths with that Place du Cirque tree, which is about 120 years old and the same species on the same soil. That puts this one somewhere between 150 and 200 years, a band wide enough to be honest and narrow enough to be useful. It sits a short walk from Gare Cornavin and the Sécheron rail stop, which makes it the easiest of Geneva's giants to reach without planning anything at all.