Ancient trees in Switzerland

Geneva has recorded the date a chestnut tree opens its first leaf every spring since 1818, one of the longest continuous records of its kind anywhere, and the tree currently doing the job is about eleven years old. This page maps 26 remarkable trees across 3 cities in Switzerland, each one researched and verified. The oldest of them is The Messikommer Eiche in Robenhausen, at over 500 years.

The record belongs to the office rather than the trunk: the sautier of the cantonal parliament walks to the designated tree, checks it, and reports the date to the press. Age here tends to arrive with that sort of paperwork. Five planes in the botanical garden were already mature enough to appear on a cantonal map in 1728, and the cedars of Parc Beaulieu, around 290 years old, grew from seed a French naturalist carried out of an English garden, with the Grange Cedar across town raised from theirs. Zurich adds four more. Twenty-five trees, two cities.

Every mapped city in Switzerland

Geneva21 trees · oldest at least 298 years 2Zurich4 trees · oldest around 246 years 3

Robenhausen1 tree · oldest over 500 years

16 species grow in Switzerland

Oaks Holm Oak 1 · Oak 1 · Pedunculate Oak 1

Planes London Plane 5 · Oriental Plane 1

Limes Small-leaved Lime 1

Chestnuts, walnuts and hazels Horse Chestnut 1

Conifers Cedar of Lebanon 4 · Giant Sequoia 3 · Himalayan Cedar 2 · Atlas Cedar 1 · Bald Cypress 1 · Stone Pine 1

More broadleaf trees Mediterranean Hackberry 1 · Service Tree 1 · Tulip Tree 1

The oldest tree mapped in Switzerland

Photo: Roland zh (CC BY-SA 3.0)

The Messikommer Eiche

Oak (Quercus sp.) · over 500 years · Robenhausen, Zurich Oberland

In 1858, labourers cutting a drainage channel near this oak's roots turned up the first waterlogged timbers of a Stone Age lakeside village, preserved so well in the peat that organic finds nobody...