The Twin Planes of Square Carnot

Two planes put in the ground in 1918, the last year of the First World War, now stand 34 and 35 metres tall in front of the Chateau de Vincennes. They are ten metres apart, close enough to read as a pair, and the city's register measures their trunks at 635 and 630 centimetres round. Those two numbers are worth a second look. A London plane does not usually reach six metres of girth in a little over a century, and the register's measurements and the city's planting date come from different places. The square's own page names both trees as common planes planted in 1918 and counts them among its oldest witnesses. Nobody has published a reason for the size, and we are not going to invent one. If you know more about these two, tell us. Square Carnot was laid out at the foot of the chateau esplanade after the Quartier Carnot cavalry barracks went up in 1889. The storm of December 1999 went through it hard. The city says only a handful of its trees came out the other side, and these two are among them. The rest of the survivors make the square worth a slow lap. A tulip tree planted in 1862, a persimmon from 1875, a giant thuja from 1912 and a weeping beech from the 1860s all stand within a short walk, the beech some fifty metres away.