In fruit
Roughly 1,000 to 1,500 years old.
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. We map 39 trees in 7 cities here. The oldest of them is The Old Yew of Cremines (If millenaire) in Cremines, at roughly 1500 years.
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. Zurich adds four more, and Robenhausen contributes a single oak on the shore where a 19th-century dig gave a whole period of European prehistory its name. Twenty-six trees, three cities.
Every place we map in Switzerland
1
Geneva21 trees · oldest 298 years2
Lausanne8 trees · oldest 250 years3
Zurich6 trees · oldest 800 years4Cremines1 tree · oldest 1500 years5Fribourg1 tree · oldest ~40 years6
Robenhausen1 tree · oldest 500 years7Villeneuve1 tree · oldest 175 years
Geneva21 trees · oldest 298 years2Lausanne8 trees · oldest 250 years3Zurich6 trees · oldest 800 years4Cremines1 tree · oldest 1500 years5Fribourg1 tree · oldest ~40 years6Robenhausen1 tree · oldest 500 years7Villeneuve1 tree · oldest 175 years22 species grow in Switzerland
Oaks Pedunculate Oak 3 · Oak 2 · Holm Oak 1
Beeches Weeping Beech 1
Planes London Plane 6 · Oriental Plane 1
Limes Large-leaved Lime 2 · Lime 1 · Small-leaved Lime 1
Chestnuts, walnuts and hazels Black Walnut 1 · Horse Chestnut 1
Conifers Cedar of Lebanon 5 · Giant Sequoia 4 · Himalayan Cedar 2 · Atlas Cedar 1 · Bald Cypress 1 · European Yew 1 · Ginkgo 1 · Stone Pine 1
More broadleaf trees Mediterranean Hackberry 1 · Service Tree 1 · Tulip Tree 1
The 10 oldest trees we map in Switzerland
Roughly 600 to 900 years old.
Photo: Potentiam (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Roughly 500 to 700 years old.
Photo: Roland zh (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Roughly 360 to 450 years old.
Photo: Kurt Spalinger-Røes (CC BY 3.0)
Roughly 298 to 320 years old.
Photo: MHM55 (CC BY-SA 4.0)
In fruit
Roughly 290 to 315 years old.
Photo: apollo13 (CC BY 3.0)
In fruit
Roughly 285 to 295 years old.
Photo: Rama (CC BY-SA 2.0 FR)
In fruit
Roughly 240 to 260 years old.
Roughly 240 to 250 years old.
In fruit
Roughly 240 to 250 years old.
Photo: Abaddon1337 (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Trees from Switzerland also appear in Autumn Worth the Trip · The Autumn Harvest · Europe's Oldest City Trees Are Mostly Immigrants. See every city on the map, or open the map to find what is near you.