Qual è l'albero più antico di Maastricht?

Maastricht's oldest-tree claim goes to whichever standard matters more, a reliable date or a possibly older but unconfirmed one. The Cannerbos oaks ring the edge of a star-shaped forest garden a baron laid out around 1700, and their roughly 300-year age is treated as trustworthy because it is tied to a single, dated landscaping event rather than a guess from girth alone. The Molenweg chestnut could plausibly be just as old or older, but its own documentation shows real disagreement: the Bomenstichting's national register estimates an 1750-1800 planting, a 2022 measurement suggested 1800 plus or minus 40 years, and a persistent local legend crediting Russian Cossacks during the 1814 siege of Maastricht has been investigated and dismissed as implausible by the tree's own researchers. Only a core sample would settle it, and none has been taken. Stadspark's three oldest beeches and its record-height plane tree are both well measured but comparatively young, 150 to 160 years old, products of the park's 19th-century expansion rather than survivors of its 17th-century linden-lined origins, none of which are known to still stand.