A trunk of 4.3 metres on a tree only 12 metres tall makes this the stoutest black locust in Barcelona and the only one the city has ever put on its register.
Black Locust
Robinia pseudoacacia
The oldest tree in Paris is a black locust planted in 1601, and the second oldest is its son. We map 18 of them, in 15 cities.
Jean Robin, herbalist to Henri IV, raised the first from seed sent out of the Appalachians; in 1636 his son Vespasien took a cutting and planted it in the new royal medicinal garden two kilometres away. Both are still standing, and the genus Robinia carries the family name. The species is otherwise the opposite of distinguished. It arrived from North America in the eighteenth century, spread across Europe's sandy ground so successfully that it is now valued mainly for holding loose banks together, and it typically runs up thin and fast and then falls over. Which is what makes the exceptions worth the walk: Barcelona's went sideways to 4.3 metres on twelve metres of tree, and Antwerp's is the thickest recorded anywhere in Belgium.
Barcelona
Paris
The oldest tree in Paris was planted in 1601, before the Mayflower sailed.
Photo: Ordifana75 (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Paris's second oldest tree is the son of its oldest.
Berlin
Berlin's most famous traffic island holds a 67-metre column, a gilded Victoria and a protected tree from North America.
Leeuwarden
Leeuwarden's own walking brochure does not lead on this tree's species.
Granada
This robinia has become famous enough in Granada to appear on a national lottery ticket.
Photo: Ben Thomas (CC BY 4.0)
Krakow
Black locusts are not supposed to be rare in Poland.
Budapest
This tree is celebrated for being 227 years old, and a historian has taken that number apart with photographs.
A 1960s survey by Budapest's own parks department already described this black locust as over a hundred years old, which places its planting somewhere in the 1860s, not long after Erzsebet Square i...
Warsaw
This tree is 160 centimetres round and five metres tall, which is the wrong shape for a black locust.
Copenhagen
Bertel Thorvaldsen spent more than 40 years in Rome becoming Europe's most celebrated Neoclassical sculptor before returning home to Copenhagen in 1838 to a hero's welcome, and this multi-stemmed b...
Something took a large piece of bark off the south side of this tree and it carried on growing.
Photo: Hans Erik Lund
Dordrecht
Somebody actually checked.
Antwerp
The thickest black locust tree recorded anywhere in Belgium grows in a small city park hemmed in by three Antwerp streets.
Haarlem
This black locust has its feet in a hedge.
Arnhem
A black locust normally carries a feathery leaf made of a dozen small leaflets.
Aarhus
A dead crown is not usually a reason to walk anywhere.
Bordeaux
The register records this black locust as 412 centimetres around and three metres tall.
Explore by city: Barcelona · Paris · Berlin · Leeuwarden · Granada · Krakow · Budapest · Warsaw · Copenhagen · Dordrecht · Antwerp · Haarlem · Arnhem · Aarhus · Bordeaux · every city · or browse all species.