What is the oldest tree in Strasbourg?
The oldest tree in Strasbourg with a date behind it is the great plane in the Parc du Contades, which the Collectivite europeenne d'Alsace dates to the 1730s, making it close to three hundred years old. It stands in a free public park north of the old town. A plane on the Quai de la Bruche is locally said to be older still, planted in 1667, but that cannot be true of a London plane, a hybrid that did not exist in Europe at the time; the likely truth, that it succeeded an earlier walnut on the same spot, is in that tree's own story.
Strasbourg's remarkable-tree list gives a name, an address, a short French description and a coordinate, and no girth, no height and no age at all. That shapes this page: most entries here carry no measurement and no birthday, and where a date exists it comes from Alsace's separate regional register or from local press rather than from the city. Thirteen further entries were left off, most of them alignments, meaning avenues, which have no single place to stand and so fail the test this site applies to every ensemble. Three entries here do cover more than one trunk, and each says so in its first sentence. Several trees rest on the city register alone, with no journalist or historian having written about them, and their stories say that plainly rather than inventing a past. One further caution belongs here rather than in a footnote: the city's own list is a planning inventory, so an entry proves a tree is protected and not that anyone has studied it. Where a second source exists it is named in that tree's story, and where none does, the story says the register is all there is.
See more themed collections of remarkable trees.