What is the oldest tree in Ypres?
The oldest tree in Ypres is the Liberty Tree of Voormezele, a lime in the churchyard of Onze-Lieve-Vrouwkerk about four kilometres southwest of the centre, dated to 1918 by the marble plaque at its foot reading Vryheidsboom 1918-1968. That puts it at roughly 105 years, and nothing in Ypres is older, because the shelling of 1914 to 1918 left nothing that could be. The Christusboom at Hollebeke grows on ground planted around 1830, but the wood standing there today is regrowth from a stump the Second World War left behind.
Every tree on this page postdates the First World War, and that is the answer rather than a hole in it. Ieper and its villages were shelled to rubble between 1914 and 1918 and the trees went with the buildings, so the tree history of this place restarts at the armistice. What follows is a documented wave of civic planting. Voormezele put a lime beside its church as a vrijheidsboom, a liberty tree, and in 1968 set a marble plaque at its foot reading Vryheidsboom 1918-1968, which is the only thing dating the tree: no source records the day it went in. Vlamertinge planted a vredesboom, a peace tree, behind the wayside cross on its square on 30 November 1919, and the local paper reported it a week later; that first tree is gone and a young lime stands in its place today. The exception proves the rule. The Christusboom at Hollebeke grows on ground planted around 1830, resprouted after 1918, was cut down to a stump the height of a man again in May 1940 and resprouted a second time. The site is old. The wood is not.
See more themed collections of remarkable trees.