Greetings from a Paris park, where a lone sequoia tree is a marvel to behold

By Rebecca Rosman

Published January 7, 2026 at 6:00 AM CST

Far-Flung Postcards is a weekly series in which NPR's international team shares moments from their lives and work around the world.

In over a decade of strolling through my favorite Parisian park, I never noticed it.

A real California sequoia — 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.

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.

"Well, you know we have a sequoia right here?!" she said, pointing at a towering tree that looked nothing like the others.

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 of either Adolphe Alphand, who oversaw the Butte Chaumont's construction, or Jean-Pierre Barillet-Deschamps, the city's chief gardener at the time.

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 — and it's still a baby.

It has cousins nearly three times its height. The famous General Sherman Tree in California is thought to be around 2,000 years old — and it stands at around 275 feet tall.

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 — with the urban visionary Georges-Eugène Haussmann's famous apartment blocks spilling out in the distance behind it.

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