What is the oldest tree in Istanbul?
The oldest tree in Istanbul is an Oriental plane growing inside Istanbul University-Cerrahpaşa's forestry research forest in Bahçeköy, Sarıyer, estimated at 1,300 to 1,400 years old. Its trunk measures 4.5 metres across, hollowed out enough that only the outer layer of wood is still doing the work of keeping it alive.
Istanbul's claim to its oldest tree comes from an unlikely source: a survey of a university's own working forest rather than a palace garden or a mosque courtyard, the places most of the city's other famous old trees grow. Istanbul University-Cerrahpaşa's Faculty of Forestry maintains an education and research forest in Bahçeköy, on the edge of Belgrad Forest, and when its own foresters dated the Oriental planes growing inside it, they found the oldest at somewhere between 1,300 and 1,400 years, predating the 1453 Ottoman conquest by seven centuries and the university itself by well over a millennium. Sources differ on the exact figure: Hürriyet Daily News quotes forestry academic Süleyman Çoban's estimate of 1,300 years, while Turkish wire coverage of the same survey rounds up to 1,400, with a trunk roughly 4.5 metres across either way. Two more officially protected monumental trees share the same forest: an octopus-shaped plane and a double-trunked specimen roughly half the age. None of the three has a plaque you would notice from the forest road. Getting there: no direct metro; bus from Sarıyer or a taxi from Hacıosman station (M2 line).
The yew, the oaks and their peers across other cities are collected in Europe's 10 Most Remarkable Ancient Trees.