The Giant Sequoia of Parc de Mon Repos

This sequoia was already worth writing about in 1912, when Henri Badoux catalogued the notable trees of the canton and put it in the book. It has had another century of growing since. Lausanne now records it at 34 metres tall and 7.2 metres round, roughly 160 years old, which places its planting in the decades when European estates were competing to raise the newly imported giant sequoia and nobody had any idea what the things would do in Swiss soil. It grows near the top of the amphitheatre in Parc de Mon Repos, with a ginkgo for a neighbour. The estate was where Pierre de Coubertin settled in 1922, some years after founding the modern Olympic movement, and the park is a short walk from the main station, which makes this an unusually easy giant tree to go and stand under. The city classifies it as a remarkable tree and a local nature foundation calls it the finest giant sequoia in Lausanne, though all the measurements trace back to the municipal record rather than to two independent tapes. Every giant sequoia in Europe is a beginner. The species reached the continent in the 1850s, so the oldest of them are still under two centuries, while the ones left standing in the Sierra Nevada run past two thousand years. This one has most of its life ahead of it.