What is the oldest tree in Zurich?

Platzspitz, the wedge of parkland where the Sihl and Limmat rivers meet, is Zurich's second-oldest public park, and its own gardeners have tagged its plane trees by planting year with a simple colour system: brown for 1780, blue for 1806, green for 1836, red for 1960, violet for 2005. The brown-tagged trees, planted in 1780, are the oldest documented specimens in the park and among the oldest confirmed trees in the city, already well established when Zurich was still a walled city-state and more than a decade before the French Revolution reshaped the continent around it. The city's own conservation survey calls at least one of them priceless without putting a franc figure on it. Platzspitz's history as a public space runs back roughly 450 years, but almost nothing survives above ground from its earliest layouts; the 1780 planes are the oldest generation that does, tagged and tracked rather than guessed at. Two entries here are day trips rather than city trees: an oak of over 360 years in the Abistwald at Marthalen, half an hour north by train, and the roughly 800-year-old linden of Linn in Aargau, 45 to 60 minutes each way via Brugg.