Seasons1 of 4
An admiral is said to have brought this tree home in his luggage. Henri de Rigny was born in Toul in 1782, and both the town and the departmental tourist board credit him with carrying a cutting or a seed north from a ginkgo in Toulon around 1804. Neither cites a period document, so it stays strong local tradition rather than settled fact. The tree itself is not in doubt: 21.84 metres when it was measured for its label, and if that 1804 planting holds, somewhere near 220 years old. That would make it an early one for France. Ginkgo biloba has no living relatives, reached European gardens only in the eighteenth century, and was still a botanical curiosity when this one went into the ground behind the town hall. Mid-November is the fortnight Toul waits for. A ginkgo does not fade into autumn so much as switch. The whole crown goes gold, holds for days, then drops most of it in one windless morning. Local guides like to say the Ecole de Nancy designers took their cue from foliage like this, a line repeated often and sourced nowhere. On 7 June 2015 it became the 375th tree in the country to carry the label Arbre remarquable de France. Nobody has published a girth for it. If you have had a tape around the trunk, tell us.
From people who stood here
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Getting there
Parc de l'Hotel de Ville, Rue de Rigny, 54200 Toul, France
You can recognise it by the height, 21.84 metres, and by mid-November, when the whole crown goes gold and then drops most of it in one windless morning. It stands in the park behind the town hall.
Walkable from Toul town centre; no public transport needed.
Autumn colour
mid-November, when the whole crown turns gold at once
The line is our estimate of how much there is to see, not a measurement. Typical for this species where this tree stands; exact weeks shift with the year.
Sources
Where the facts on this page come from. The story was written with AI from these sources, and readers who know the tree correct it.