Black Locust

The oldest tree in Paris is a black locust planted in 1601, and the second oldest is its son. This page maps every black locust on the site, 14 so far across 12 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

The Black Locust of the Ciutadella

not dated; the register's age column reads '100 anys' rather than a year · Sant Pere, Santa Caterina i la Ribera, Ciutat Vella

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.

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Paris

Photo: Ordifana75 (CC BY-SA 3.0)

The Robinier of Square Rene-Viviani

425 years · Latin Quarter, 5th arrondissement

The oldest tree in Paris was planted in 1601, before the Mayflower sailed.

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The Second Robinier

390 years · Jardin des Plantes, 5th arrondissement

Paris's second oldest tree is the son of its oldest.

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Copenhagen

Thorvaldsen's Robinia

around 185 years · Slotsholmen

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...

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Nijmegen

The Black Locust of Krayenhoffpark

~140 years · Biezen

The Dutch name for this tree translates literally as false Christ's-thorn, a reference to the sharp paired spines that line its young branches, thorns sharp enough that European folklore once linke...

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Krakow

Poland's Oldest Black Locust

239 years · Wesola

Black locusts are not supposed to be rare in Poland.

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Budapest

The Old Acacia of Szechenyi Square

documented as 227 years (planted 1789), though disputed; possibly considerably younger · Belvaros-Lipotvaros

This tree is celebrated for being 227 years old, and a historian has taken that number apart with photographs.

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The Old Acacia of Erzsebet Square

150-165 years · Belvaros-Lipotvaros

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...

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