Les Séquoias et le Cèdre du Rond de Monsieur

Seven giant sequoias ring a single road junction in a French forest of oak and beech. The local forest association, which keeps the map of the forest's remarkable trees, records that the seed for France's first sequoias was imported from America in 1854, and calls this ring unique in the Forêt de Senonches. One cedar grows tight against a neighbouring sequoia, so close that the association describes the two as a pair. A specialist survey of French sequoias counts eight trunks at the Rond and may well be counting that cedar among them, which is a forgivable error at this size. Sizes vary trunk to trunk. Measured circumferences at chest height run from 2.8 to 5.5 metres, so the 5.59 metres often quoted for this site belongs to one representative tree rather than to all of them. The tallest sequoia comes in at 34.2 metres, the cedar at 29.7. The age is less settled than the origin. The association put them at 90 years in 2024; a visitor writing in 2011 described a circle of sequoias about a century old. Somewhere between 85 and 115 years, then, and the 1854 date belongs to the seed reaching France rather than to the day these particular trees went in. This is also where the walk starts. The Rond de Monsieur is the car park for the whole venerable-trees loop, and there is an interpretive panel on site.