A year ago, near the end of June, a thunderstorm rolled over Paris and left a number of trees in the north-west of town spectacularly damaged. On my way to work the next morning, there was a plane tree right outside my métro station that had snapped a good meter above the ground. Here is what happened over the course of the following year:
The tree living its best life (for a Paris street tree) in April.
The oldest tree in Paris, a locust tree, stands only a stone’s throw from Notre Dame. In fact, you can see the cathedral from the tree, and presumably, the tree from the cathedral.
The species’ Latin name Robinia pseudoacacia, honors the royal French botanist Jean Robin, who introduced the tree in France. It was he who planted this particular specimen 400 years ago in what is now the Square René Viviani, a small city park in the 5th arrondissement, near the well-known bookshop Shakespeare and Company.
Ready for some history? When the tree was planted in 1602, Henri IV was king of France. He was the protestant king who converted to Catholicism and promulgated the Edict of Nantes, which gave Protestants religious liberties and effectively ending the bloody Wars of Religion.
Henri’s son and successor, the future Louis XIII, was one year old, and Henri himself was still nine years away from being assassinated. The tree’s next-door neighbor, Notre Dame cathedral, was already 250 years old.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic, the Brit Bartholomew Gosnold, reached Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard, and Nantucket.
