The Signposted Oak of Jardin des Plantes

Two entirely separate sets of people decided this oak was worth pointing at. Toulouse's urban tree inventory carries it under the city's own remarkable label, and volunteer mapmakers have independently marked the same spot in the Jardin des Plantes as a named, signposted specimen: chene pedoncule, pedunculate oak. Neither of them recorded how old it is, and no other source names it, so the honest answer on age is that nobody has published one. What the two records do between them is confirm that the tree exists, where it stands and what it is, which is more than most entries on a municipal list can claim. It grows in a seven hectare botanical garden on the Allee Jules-Guesde, the middle link in a chain of three public gardens that run into one another along the eastern edge of the city centre. Pedunculate oak is the great long-lived oak of northern Europe, routinely passing five hundred years where nothing interferes with it, and it is not a Mediterranean tree by temperament. This far south it is planted rather than wild. In autumn it drops acorns on long stalks, the peduncles the species is named for, which is the detail that separates it from the sessile oaks it otherwise resembles. Free, open daily, and central.