{"id":499307,"date":"2026-01-07T16:42:11","date_gmt":"2026-01-07T16:42:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/499307\/"},"modified":"2026-01-07T16:42:11","modified_gmt":"2026-01-07T16:42:11","slug":"a-sequoia-tree-grows-in-paris-npr","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/499307\/","title":{"rendered":"A sequoia tree grows in Paris : NPR"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"A<\/p>\n

Far-Flung Postcards is a weekly series in which NPR’s international team shares moments from their lives and work around the world.<\/p>\n

In over a decade of strolling through my favorite Parisian park, I never noticed it.<\/p>\n

A real California sequoia \u2014 here in the Parc des Buttes Chaumont. The park, a former landfill, transformed under Napoleon III into one of the French capital’s greenest escapes.<\/p>\n

In August, a friend finally pointed it out to me. We were sprawled on the grass on a perfect Sunday afternoon when I mentioned an upcoming trip to Sequoia National Park in California.<\/p>\n

“Well, you know we have a sequoia right here?!” she said, pointing at a towering tree that looked nothing like the others.<\/p>\n

I still can’t say for sure who planted it. The tree went in around the time the park opened in 1867, and it was likely the work<\/a> of either Adolphe Alphand, who oversaw the Butte Chaumont’s construction, or Jean-Pierre Barillet-Deschamps, the city’s chief gardener at the time.<\/p>\n

Whoever did it, they probably didn’t anticipate just how tall a sequoia can grow. This sequoia, now over 100 feet high, may be the tallest tree in Paris<\/a> \u2014 and it’s still a baby.<\/p>\n

It has cousins nearly three times its height. The famous General Sherman Tree in California is thought to be around 2,000 years old \u2014 and it stands at around<\/a> 275 feet tall.<\/p>\n

While General Sherman may have won the height game (for now), there’s something remarkable about gazing at that single sequoia in a northeast corner of Paris \u2014 with the urban visionary Georges-Eug\u00e8ne Haussmann’s famous apartment blocks spilling out in the distance behind it.<\/p>\n

See more photos from around the world:<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Far-Flung Postcards is a weekly series in which NPR’s international team shares moments from their lives and work…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":499308,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[50,103],"class_list":{"0":"post-499307","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-news","9":"tag-world"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115854818948776144","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/499307","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=499307"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/499307\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/499308"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=499307"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=499307"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=499307"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}