The Black Walnut of Lac Daumesnil

This walnut was planted twenty years before the lake it now stands beside. The city dates it to 1845; Lac Daumesnil was dug in 1865, and the Ile de Bercy was made with it. The tree had a head start on the whole landscape around it. It is a black walnut, an American species, and it did not grow the tidy way. The city's fact sheet describes a clump that started out as three stems, and a large wound on the trunk that you can see from the road, now healing over with a thick roll of scar wood. The sheet calls the tree fully mature but vigorous, with some dead branches and cavities. In other words, an old tree behaving like one, and still laying down wood around its own damage. The figures depend on when you ask. The fact sheet, with 2015 measurements, gives 580 centimetres round and 30 metres tall. The open register now says 605 centimetres and 26 metres. Nobody has published why the two surveys differ, so take both sets as what they are. In 2015 the A.R.B.R.E.S. association, which awards France's national label for remarkable trees, named it an Arbre Remarquable de France, with the City of Paris as the recipient. It stands by the road that circles the lake, close enough to study the scar without leaving the path.