What is the oldest tree in Leuven?
The oldest tree in Leuven is a London plane in Arenbergpark in Heverlee, roughly 230 to 250 years old, standing in the open grounds around Arenberg castle, which is now KU Leuven's engineering faculty. Flanders' heritage inventory dates it to possibly the end of the eighteenth century, because the tree already appears on the design drawn for the park when it was recut in landscape style for the Duke of Arenberg between 1775 and 1778.
Possibly is the register's own word, and it is doing real work. Flanders' heritage inventory holds no planting record for the Arenbergpark plane. What it holds is the tree's appearance on a design made for the park when the Duke of Arenberg had his formal grounds recut in the English landscape style between 1775 and 1778, which places the tree in that period without dating it to a year. The measurements come from the inventory's own survey of woody heritage: 7.43 metres round at chest height, a crown 34.5 metres across, and no neighbour anywhere near it in size. Nothing else in Leuven competes on a documented date, and that says more about the records than about the trees. The three limes at the Drie Linden chapel in Wilsele carry no age, no girth and no species beyond the genus. The bundle plane at Wijgmaal is thicker than either, 9.20 metres round, and cannot be dated from that at all, because it is several trunks fused into one. Arenbergpark itself is free and unfenced, walked through daily by students. The bus stop is Heverlee Arenberg, roughly twenty minutes out from the centre of Leuven.
See more themed collections of remarkable trees.