The Five Brothers
about 50 yearsGrand Fir
Thirty-nine metres in about fifty years. That is the whole case for these firs, and it is a good one: they are among the youngest trees on this page, about fifty years old, and they are already taller than almost everything around them. Work it out and the crown has gone up something like three quarters of a metre a year, every year, without a pause. Abies grandis is not a French tree. It comes from the Pacific Northwest, from Oregon and British Columbia, where it grows in high rainfall and grows fast, and European foresters have planted it since the 19th century for exactly the behaviour on display here. The trunk is 110 centimetres through at the base. Les cinq freres, the five brothers, is the local name, and the register does not actually say how many stems there are or whether they are fused at the foot or simply five trees that came up together. Nobody in this pass has stood underneath to check. If you get there first, tell us what you see. They stand a short way inside parcelle 73, among broadleaf trees, which is what makes the height obvious.
The button above opens directions in your maps app. No public transport reaches the forest. By car: from the D121 (between Mont-Saint-Aignan and Houppeville) park at the parcelle 69 car park (former V1 site); at the back of the car park take the path on the right at the start of the Grand Canton forest road, and where it bends 90 degrees continue straight on the footpath. The 'bouquet' stands not far inside parcelle 73, among broadleaf trees.
- Species
- Grand Fir (Abies grandis)
- Age estimate
- about 50 years
- Location
- Parcelle 73, off the D121 between Mont-Saint-Aignan and Houppeville, Foret domaniale Verte (Foret Verte, near Bois-Guillaume/Houppeville)
- Access
- Free, public ONF-managed forest, no restrictions. Waymarked as part of the official 'arbres remarquables' trail.
- Getting there
- No public transport reaches the forest. By car: from the D121 (between Mont-Saint-Aignan and Houppeville) park at the parcelle 69 car park (former V1 site); at the back of the car park take the path on the right at the start of the Grand Canton forest road, and where it bends 90 degrees continue straight on the footpath. The 'bouquet' stands not far inside parcelle 73, among broadleaf trees.
Trees nearby
Ticking this one off, walks past several more, and your collection growing city by city: that is the Ancient Trees app.
Get the appThis page was researched from a distance. If you know this tree, you know things we do not: the species, the age, the size, whether the photo shows the right tree, or that it is gone. Every field on this page can be corrected.
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