The Châtaignier de l'Éraudière

Local tradition puts this chestnut in the ground in the year 756. The city's own parks department is more careful and says about 800 years; the official Nantes description gives 800 to 1200, depending which source you follow. Nobody has settled it. At any point in that range it is the oldest tree in Loire-Atlantique. It used to stand in the private grounds of the château de l'Éraudière. Nantes grew east and swallowed the grounds, and the tree came out of it with a public square of its own, the Square de la Mée, laid out around the trunk. The low fence around it is there to keep feet off the root plate rather than to keep anyone at a distance. Fifteen metres tall, twelve across, with a trunk over ten metres round that has twisted into a spiral as it hollowed. Two huge limbs come off it and reach sideways, which is what the city means when it calls the tree a living sculpture. A local guide once put a tape around it at a metre up and got 11.70 metres, while admitting the method was rough. And it still fruits. Every autumn a tree that local memory dates to the Carolingians drops chestnuts onto a square in a north-eastern Nantes suburb, with the busway stopping at the gate.