Barney the Plane

The biggest London plane in the city is a tree most Londoners have never heard of. Nicknamed Barney, it stands at Barn Elms in the riverside suburb of Barnes, tucked at the edge of the land next to the London Wetland Centre, and it is old enough, over 300 years, that it is treated locally as potentially the single oldest London plane anywhere in the capital. The species is the city's signature tree for a reason: it tolerates soot, survives brutal pruning, and outlives almost everything planted around it, and Barney is the patriarch of them all in Barnes. Its own Great Trees of London plaque states the claim plainly, calling it simply the oldest in London, though the tree's coordinates only firmed up in 2026, when a photographer's geotagged shot of Barney was checked against the plaque's own recorded position and the two turned out to sit within nine metres of each other, close enough to count as the same tree rather than two separate estimates. Most visitors to Barn Elms come for the birdwatching at the Wetland Centre next door and walk straight past the small plaque without noticing it, which is itself part of Barney's story: London's biggest plane tree stands anonymously beside one of the city's most visited nature reserves.