What is the oldest tree in Viroflay?
Viroflay's notable tree is the Chene de la Vierge, a Pedunculate Oak roughly 450 to 550 years old standing alone at the edge of the Foret de Meudon. It carries the label Arbre remarquable de France and has been a pilgrimage site, an arbre a clous, since the cholera epidemics of the 1850s and 1870s.
The oak stands alone on the verge of the Route du Pave-de-Meudon, where the Foret de Meudon gives way to the road, and it gave its name to the church built nearby in 1966, Notre-Dame-du-Chene, rather than the other way round. Its age is derived rather than counted: a 2009 measurement put the girth at 527 centimetres, and a published growth rate for a slow oak gives a range of 450 to 550 years. Through the Paris region's cholera epidemics of the 1850s and 1870s, people walked out to pray and left objects in its bark, which is how it earned the names arbre a clous and arbre a loques; ex-votos are still attached today. France's Arbres remarquables register listed it in 2002. A short train ride away in La Celle-Saint-Cloud, a multisecular sweet chestnut stands as the centrepiece of a square redesigned to show it off; it won France's national Tree of the Year vote in 2021 and placed eighth at the European final in 2022.
One of Viroflay's trees also appears in The Autumn Harvest, a themed collection spanning several cities.