The Great Plane of Parc Monceau

The thickest tree in Paris has a waistline of seven metres. Planted in 1814, the year Napoleon abdicated and the allied armies camped in the city, this oriental plane grew up in what was then the private pleasure garden of the Orleans family. Parc Monceau had been laid out as an aristocratic fantasy of ruins and follies, and the plane outgrew all of them. It is now 31 metres tall with a crown to match, the largest of its species in the city. The park around it became public under Haussmann in 1861, and the tree has since shaded Proust, who walked here as a boy, and several generations of the best dressed joggers in Paris. Its bark peels in grey and cream patches and its lower branches are thicker than most full grown street trees. The city lists it among its officially remarkable trees. Stand at the trunk and look up: the first branch is higher than the surrounding lampposts.