What is the oldest tree in Toronto?
The oldest tree in Toronto is Zhelevo, a red oak on Coral Gable Drive in Etobicoke, at roughly three hundred years old with an honest band running from 250 to 320. It predates the European settlement of the Humber River area, which began in 1793, and stood near the old Toronto Carrying Place Trail between Lake Ontario and Lake Simcoe. Its trunk measures nearly five metres round and its crown, at 24 metres, used to tower over the private house beside it, until Toronto City Council voted in 2020 to buy that property and demolish the house instead, after a public campaign of more than 1,300 donors got there first. The city is building a public parkette on the lot now, due to open in spring 2027; until then the tree is visible from the street rather than walk-up. Toronto's official tree, the red oak in Kew Gardens, is close behind at roughly 220 years, a title the city gave it in 2022 for its own reasons rather than for age: its trunk measures 5.3 metres round, the crown reaches roughly 36 metres, and arborists read a diameter of 169 centimetres as an age of about 220 years, with an honest band running from 200 to 260. Nobody has cored either tree, so both bands are the answer rather than a hedge.
Ontario has no government register of remarkable trees. What it has instead is the Ontario Heritage Tree Program run by Forests Ontario, a nomination-based designation, and that is where all six trees on this page come from; each was then checked against independent sources, a city page, a local historical society or a newspaper. Most ages here come off a tape measure and an assumed growth rate, with three exceptions: the King's Oak was planted on 12 May 1937 and the Lambton Park maples on 11 November 1919, both birthdays known to the day, and Zhelevo's age follows several newspapers' converged estimate of roughly 300 years rather than the register's own older figure of 250. Two figures on this page disagree and both are recorded rather than reconciled: Forests Canada puts Big Red at 24 metres tall, a 2024 local report at 33. Two cautions about precision: the five heritage trees in Echo Valley Park share a single map coordinate, which is why the Turkish hazel here is marked approximate, and the six Lambton Park maples share one register coordinate the same way.
See more themed collections of remarkable trees.