The Giant Sequoia of Bagatelle

The city's register says this giant sequoia was planted in 1850, and the tree's own species says otherwise. Sequoiadendron giganteum was first brought into cultivation in Britain in 1853, and the large shipment of seed that spread it across Europe arrived that December. A sequoia in a Paris park in 1850 would have been ahead of the botanists. Either the date is rounded or it is wrong, and nobody has published which, so we give its age broadly, at around 150 years or more. If you know where the 1850 comes from, tell us. Whatever the year, it has done well. The register measures it at 540 centimetres round and 30 metres tall; the city's printed sheet gives 511 and 28. That is a modest size for a species that passes 80 metres in California, and a large one for a Paris garden. It grows near the Pagoda in the Parc de Bagatelle, the garden around the small chateau the comte d'Artois had built in 1777 to win a bet with Marie-Antoinette. The garden's great planes were planted between 1842 and 1847, when the park was enlarged, so whatever its exact year the sequoia is younger than they are, and an American newcomer among them. The city still counts it among the park's remarkable trees. Bagatelle charges a small entry fee from April to September and is free the rest of the year. One of those planes, by the Orangerie, stands 125 metres away.