The Sophora by the Lake

Some trees earn their place through size, this one through posture. The Japanese pagoda tree at the edge of the Buttes-Chaumont lake was planted in 1873, six years after the park opened, and has spent 150 years leaning slowly toward the water. It is short for a remarkable tree, ten metres, but its trunk is nearly four metres around and its low, twisting silhouette against the lake and the artificial cliff behind it has made it one of the most photographed trees in the park. Pagoda trees reached Europe from China in the 1740s via a Jesuit missionary's seeds, and Paris planted them enthusiastically in its new parks. This one grew up alongside the Third Republic, survived both sieges of Paris in 1870 and 1871 while the park was barely three years old, and now shades rowers and picnickers on the same bank. The city lists it among its officially classified remarkable trees.