Germans call this species the giant tree of life, Riesen-Lebensbaum, and Berlin used exactly that name when it put this one under protection as natural monument 6-76/B-2 on 2 March 1993.
Western Red Cedar
Thuja plicata
Western red cedar grows to enormous size in the rainforests of the Pacific Northwest, and its wood resists rot so well that a tree can stay alive on a strip of bark. We map 11 of them, in 10 cities.
The Duncan Cedar, near Olympic National Park, is the largest known in the world and the largest tree of any species in Washington: over a thousand years old, 54 metres tall, and mostly dead wood. Planted abroad, it does something else. Its lowest branches bend under their own weight, touch the ground, root where they land and thicken into trunks of their own. Sintra's has been heading toward the lake below Pena Palace for about 150 years, and forestry students have used it as a teaching example since at least 1916. Strasbourg's is doing the same in the Parc de l'Orangerie. Cork's, at Blarney, sends out limbs each thicker than most full grown trees.
Berlin
Sintra
This tree has spent a century and a half slowly relocating itself.
Photo: LBM1948 (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Gdansk
Poland protects four trees on this spot as a single object.
Cork
The estate calls this the most photographed tree in its gardens, which is a serious claim on grounds that also hold a medieval yew and the Blarney Stone.
Photo: Marathon, via geograph.org.uk and Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)
Arnhem
This tree is in the middle of turning itself into several trees.
Helmond
In the Pacific Northwest this species reaches sixty metres and can live past a thousand years.
Olympic National Park
The largest known western red cedar in the world is mostly dead wood, and it is still alive.
Photo: Marrstree (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Half of this tree is lying on the ground.
Photo: rachel_thecat (CC BY-SA 2.0)
Hilversum
When the house came down in 1928 the land was parcelled up and sold, all of it except the walled garden, which the owner's will required to be kept.
Photo: Michel Langeveld (CC BY)
Kintai
Someone has been measuring this tree for half a century, and the numbers are the best thing about it.
Photo: Kusurija (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Strasbourg
This tree is quietly making copies of itself.
Explore by city: Berlin · Sintra · Gdansk · Cork · Arnhem · Helmond · Olympic National Park · Hilversum · Strasbourg · every city · or browse all species.