Diane de Poitiers' Tree

This plane tree is 31 metres tall and 43 metres wide, which is the wrong way round for a plane and takes some explaining. The explanation is at ground level. Low branches that reached the soil have rooted where they touched it and sent up growth of their own, a habit called layering, helped along by a pond close enough to keep the ground damp. The tree has been quietly walking outward for centuries. It is named for Diane de Poitiers, mistress of Henri II, who is said to have had it planted around 1556. French Wikipedia files that as legend rather than documented fact, so take the name as a name and the date as a story: at face value it would make the tree about 470 years old. What nobody disputes is a trunk over eight metres round and a shape that took a very long time to build. Oriental planes are the parent species of the London plane, the tree that lines half the boulevards of Europe, and they are far less often left alone long enough to do what this one has done. Most planes get pruned into a column. This one was allowed to sprawl. The ARBRES association labelled it a Remarkable Tree in July 2000. It stands free and open in the Parc de Diane at Les Clayes-sous-Bois, west of Paris in the Yvelines, a short walk from the station.