What is the oldest tree in Lyon?

No single tree in Lyon has a formally documented single oldest claim. The most precisely dated remarkable tree is the Pin de Bunge in Parc de la Tête d'Or, planted around 1856 during the park's creation, now roughly 170 years old.

Why does Parc de la Tête d'Or have so many rare trees?

It was designed from 1856 by Swiss landscape architects Eugène and Denis Bühler as a full arboretum alongside a public park, and absorbed Lyon's old botanical garden collection in 1857, giving it species pulled from four continents rather than the usual local mix.

How does Lyon protect its remarkable trees?

Through the national Arbre Remarquable label, awarded by the A.R.B.R.E.S. association, which four individual Lyon trees currently hold, and through the Metropole's own urban plan (PLU), which flags protected trees and wooded areas on open data maps.

Are Lyon's remarkable trees free to see?

Yes. All ten stand in free public parks and gardens with no entry fee, including the island garden of Île Barbe, reachable on foot via a footbridge over the Saône.

France

Ancient Trees in Lyon

Lyon keeps a formal, published list of its remarkable trees, four so far carrying the national Arbre Remarquable label, one park holding the collective Ensemble Arboré Remarquable label for its whole 8,800-tree collection. That park, the Tête d'Or, exists because 19th century Lyonnais wanted a green space to rival Paris's Bois de Boulogne, and two Swiss brothers gave them one with an arboretum's worth of species from four continents. What survives elsewhere is quieter: a giant chestnut in a half-wild neighbourhood park, a cedar on a Saône island where monks gardened for over a thousand years, an oak collection planted the year before the First World War.

The Pin de Bunge, or Pin de Napoléon

Lacebark Pine (Pinus bungeana) · approximately 170 years · 6th arrondissement

This pine's bark peels in patches of grey, green and cream as it ages, a trait so distinctive that the species barely needs its Latin name to identify it. Pinus bungeana is native to central China, first documented for Western science by the Russian botanist Alexander von Bunge in 1831 at a temple garden in Beijing, and this specimen was probably planted in 1856, the year construction began on the Parc de la Tête d'Or itself, making it one of the park's original plantings rather than a later addition. The International Dendrology Society's own reference site names it directly as the oldest cultivated Pinus bungeana in Europe, calling it a national treasure of the Lyon botanical garden, a specific claim rather than a vague superlative, and one this project treats as credible given the source. Locally it carries the nickname Pin de Napoléon, though no source connects the name to any specific historical event rather than general period association, so that link is not claimed here as fact. Nearly 170 years on, its trunk has developed the pale, almost white patchwork bark that only develops with real age, the single feature that makes this pine worth seeking out among the arboretum's thousands of other specimens.

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Photo: Krzysztof Golik, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0)

The Osage Orange of the Tête d'Or

Osage Orange (Maclura pomifera) · over 100 years · 6th arrondissement

This tree's American ancestors were weapons before they were shade. Maclura pomifera is named for the Osage nation of the central United States, who prized its wood, dense, springy and rot-resistant, for war bows and arrows above almost any other timber available to them. The species reached Europe in 1823, and French growers in the south of the country initially planted it not for its odd, wrinkled, inedible fruit but as living fencing and, briefly, as a food source for silkworms before mulberry proved more practical. This specimen in the Tête d'Or's arboretum has grown into something closer to a specimen tree than a hedge: a dendrologist's survey put its girth at 3.70 metres a metre above the ground, with a trunk described as ridged and hollowed over some two metres of its height, reasonably read as the marks of a genuinely old, over-a-century specimen rather than a fast-growing recent planting. Osage orange also spreads by layering, sending down roots wherever a low branch touches soil, so what looks like one tree in a dense stand may in places be a single genetic individual repeating itself.

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The Bald Cypress of the Tête d'Or

Bald Cypress (Taxodium distichum) · undated, mature specimen · 6th arrondissement

This tree grows as though it remembers the Louisiana wetlands its species comes from, even landlocked in a Lyon park more than eight thousand kilometres away. Taxodium distichum is one of the few conifers that sheds its needles every autumn, and where it grows in standing water, it sends up woody knees, called pneumatophores, that poke above the surface to bring oxygen to submerged roots, a trait this specimen displays even without the flooded ground its Gulf Coast relatives depend on. A dendrological survey recorded its girth at 5.45 metres a metre above ground and its height at just over 30 metres, among the largest measured trees anywhere in the park's arboretum, with a deeply fluted, buttressed trunk in excellent health. No source gives it a specific planting date, so its age is estimated here from the park's own founding in the 1850s rather than documented directly, but a tree of this size, in a species not known for exceptionally fast growth, is a serious candidate for one of the arboretum's oldest original plantings.

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The Giant Chestnut of Parc de la Garde

Common Horse Chestnut (Aesculus hippocastanum) · undated, called a giant specimen · Champvert, 5th arrondissement

Most visitors to this park come for the wildness rather than any single tree, but the chestnut at its centre is the reason locals bother naming the place at all. Parc de la Garde keeps a half-forested character unusual for a Lyon city park: its lower half is genuinely wooded, criss-crossed by informal paths, and holds a small stone bridge that once carried the old Vaugneray tramway line through the woods before the route was abandoned. The horse chestnut standing among these trees has been formally recognised with France's national Arbre Remarquable label, described locally simply as an enormous trunk carrying multiple large branches, a scale that marks it out even among the park's other mature trees. No source gives the tree an individual age or measured girth beyond that general description, so any figure here is an estimate rather than a documented record. The label itself, rather than any dramatic history, is what distinguishes this specimen from the thousands of ordinary horse chestnuts planted across French parks in the 19th and 20th centuries.

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The Japanese Pagoda Tree of Parc de Gerland

Japanese Pagoda Tree (Styphnolobium japonicum) · undated · Gerland, 7th arrondissement

Gerland is one of Lyon's newer large parks by name, built out on former industrial and marshland south of the city centre and reworked repeatedly through the 20th century, so a tree old enough to carry a national remarkable-tree label stands out by contrast with almost everything else growing around it. In 2024 the A.R.B.R.E.S. association added this Japanese pagoda tree to its national list, formally measuring it at 16 metres tall with an 18 metre crown spread and a trunk 302 centimetres around at chest height, figures precise enough to track any future growth or decline against. Despite the common name, the species is native to China rather than Japan, introduced to Europe in the 18th century and prized since for flowering late in summer when few other large trees are still blooming, a trait that makes it valuable to bees and other pollinators after the main spring flush has finished. No individual planting date is documented, so the tree's age is estimated here from its measured size rather than a verified record, but the label recognition alone marks it as one of the more significant individual trees in a 40 hectare park built mainly for sport and recreation rather than horticulture.

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The Atlas Cedar of Parc de la Chapelle

Atlas Cedar (Cedrus atlantica) · locally claimed at 500 years, botanically disputed · Champvert, 9th arrondissement

This cedar is effectively the reason the park around it exists in its current shape: much of Parc de la Chapelle is built around a single enormous specimen, with the site's open lawn and paths arranged to give the tree room rather than the other way around. Measured at 28 metres tall with a 32 metre crown spread and a trunk 6.35 metres around, it received France's national Arbre Remarquable label on 16 October 2024, and city sources describe it as multi-centenary, some putting a figure of around 500 years on it directly. That number sits awkwardly against the species' own history: Cedrus atlantica, native to the Atlas Mountains of Morocco and Algeria, was not introduced into French cultivation until the 1840s, which would make a genuinely 500-year-old specimen growing in a Lyon park difficult to reconcile with any documented planting. The claim is stated here as what it is, a locally repeated figure rather than a settled fact, alongside the tree's real, independently confirmed scale and its 2024 national label. Whatever its true age, it is locally described as possibly the largest Atlas cedar in Lyon, and its branches shelter birds and squirrels in a quiet residential corner of the 9th arrondissement.

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The Cedar of Île Barbe

Cedar of Lebanon (Cedrus libani) · undated, called immense · Île Barbe

Monks gardened this island in the Saône for roughly fourteen centuries before anyone planted this specific tree, which puts even an old cedar into perspective. A Benedictine abbey occupied the northern half of Île Barbe from the 4th century until the Revolution finally dissolved it in the 18th, making it one of the oldest continuously religious sites in the Lyon region, host over that span to a long procession of ecclesiastical and lay notables the local record simply describes as celebrities of their era. The monks' garden, recently restored, keeps rare species and several genuinely centuries-old specimens today, and among them a single immense cedar of Lebanon stands out enough that visitors and local dendrological surveys single it out by name, though without giving it a specific measured age. No source dates the cedar's planting, so any age given here is a rough estimate rather than a documented figure, but a cedar of Lebanon reaching immense scale in a temperate French garden is consistent with a planting well over a century old, a species that can live a thousand years given the right conditions. The island itself, reached on foot over a footbridge from the Lyon quays, keeps a genuinely different, half-wild character from the rest of the city around it.

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The Oak Collection of Parc de la Cerisaie

Mixed species (1913 hillside park) · undated, park designed 1913 · Croix-Rousse, 4th arrondissement

This park takes its name from a cherry orchard that no longer exists, replaced just before the First World War by a very different planting scheme. Landscape architect René-Edouard André, son of the more famous Édouard André whose formal garden style shaped parks across France and beyond, designed Parc de la Cerisaie in 1913 on the Croix-Rousse hillside, centring the roughly 1,200-tree planting on a significant oak collection alongside birches, yews and beeches. That timing puts the park's founding trees at just over a century old today, planted the year before the war that would go on to reshape the neighbourhood and the city around them. No individual tree in the collection carries a separately documented age or measurement, so the range given here describes the park's own founding date rather than any single named specimen, consistent with how this project treats other undated group plantings. What survives is less a single monumental tree than a coherent, deliberately designed early 20th century woodland, unusually intact for a century-old civic planting scheme.

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The Garden Trees of Jardin des Chartreux

Mixed species (Croix-Rousse hillside garden) · undated · Croix-Rousse, 4th arrondissement

This garden sits on the steep slope between the Croix-Rousse plateau and the Saône, on ground once attached to a Carthusian monastery that gave the neighbourhood its name and that disappeared, like most French religious houses of its kind, during the Revolution. What remains today is a public garden of broad lawns and mature trees, magnolia, cedar and horse chestnut among the species named in descriptions of the site, arranged to take advantage of a genuinely striking view over the Saône quays and the hills of Fourvière on the opposite bank. No individual tree here has a documented planting date or measurement, and no single specimen is singled out by name the way the labelled trees elsewhere on this list are, so this entry describes the garden's mature tree cover as a group rather than claiming one named champion. The steep terrain that makes the view worthwhile also keeps the garden genuinely quiet, a local rather than a tourist destination, reached by a climb up from the river that most visitors to Lyon never make.

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The Cappadocian Maple of the Tête d'Or

Cappadocian Maple (Acer cappadocicum) · undated, mature specimen · 6th arrondissement

This maple comes from a stretch of the world most visitors to a French municipal park have never had reason to think about: the mountain forests running from the Caucasus through northern Iran and on toward the Himalayas, where Acer cappadocicum grows wild among beech and oak. Lyon's botanical garden, folded into the Tête d'Or since 1857, was built to hold exactly this kind of geographic range, species chosen for scientific and educational value as much as for looks. A dendrological survey of the park recorded this specimen's girth at 3.20 metres a metre above ground and its height at 26 metres, respectable rather than record-breaking figures next to the arboretum's largest specimens, but enough to mark it as a genuinely mature, long-established tree rather than a recent planting. No individual planting date is documented, so its age is estimated here from its measured size and the arboretum's own founding period rather than a verified record. In autumn its leaves turn a clean, even yellow, a display Cappadocian maples are specifically valued for in cultivation, though no source dates this specimen's colour peak precisely enough to state a reliable calendar window here.

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Going there? Download all 10 trees as a map file and open it in Google Maps, Organic Maps or any hiking app. Works offline, no app needed.

Frequently asked

What is the oldest tree in Lyon?: No single tree in Lyon has a formally documented single oldest claim. The most precisely dated remarkable tree is the Pin de Bunge in Parc de la Tête d'Or, planted around 1856 during the park's creation, now roughly 170 years old.
Why does Parc de la Tête d'Or have so many rare trees?: It was designed from 1856 by Swiss landscape architects Eugène and Denis Bühler as a full arboretum alongside a public park, and absorbed Lyon's old botanical garden collection in 1857, giving it species pulled from four continents rather than the usual local mix.
How does Lyon protect its remarkable trees?: Through the national Arbre Remarquable label, awarded by the A.R.B.R.E.S. association, which four individual Lyon trees currently hold, and through the Metropole's own urban plan (PLU), which flags protected trees and wooded areas on open data maps.
Are Lyon's remarkable trees free to see?: Yes. All ten stand in free public parks and gardens with no entry fee, including the island garden of Île Barbe, reachable on foot via a footbridge over the Saône.
More on the oldest tree: What is the oldest tree in Lyon? The full answer, with map and directions.
More like this: Several of these trees also appear in Europe's 10 Most Remarkable Ancient Trees.
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Walk 6 of these trees about 5.0 km, 1h 7m on foot