The Second Robinier

Paris's second oldest tree is the son of its oldest. In 1636 Vespasien Robin, botanist to the king and son of Jean Robin, took a cutting from his father's black locust and planted it in the brand new royal medicinal garden. The father tree still stands two kilometres away at Square Rene-Viviani. The son has now been growing for close to four centuries in what became the Jardin des Plantes, making the pair almost certainly the oldest parent and child trees in any European city. It was already a mature tree when Buffon ran the garden in the 1700s and when the Museum of Natural History was founded during the Revolution. Like its father it is propped, scarred and still flowering. Botanists still take cuttings from both trees, which means the Robin family line, brought from America as a handful of seeds, keeps spreading four hundred years on. Few of the garden's seven million yearly visitors realize the unassuming acacia is nearly the oldest thing in it.