Tree Lined and Very French

Driving around France you are always on straight roads that are lined and shaded by plane trees. But who planted all the trees in France, and why?

We have heard a lot of answers that are all wrong. The Romans did it along their straight roads – no, those trees would be dead and today’s roads are not Roman. Napoleon did it to shade the movement of troops – no, most of the trees were planted before Napoleon and he would have had to wait 50 years for the trees to shade his troops. The land owners did it for decoration – no, the land owners would not have spent their money other than on their land.

When Louis XV came to the throne the roads of France were in a terrible state and the finance minister (Orry) was put in charge of fixing things to speed commerce and travel. He created a “corvée des chemins” – a road duty/chore/obligation – that forced everyone to build and maintain roads. The major roads were specified to be 19.5 meters wide with a drainage trench each side and lined … you guessed it … with trees. Looking at the specification, it was 84 feet or 27 meters from tree to tree.

The French can do infrastructure and by the end of the reign there were 25,000 Km of roads and the travel time from (say) Paris to Orleans dropped from 2.5 days to one day – the 18thC equivalent of the TGV.

Today, opinions vary about whether to keep the trees. Some say they are dangerous – one in eight road deaths are from hitting a tree – but others argue they the closeness of the trees gives a greater impression of speed and slows people down. If you run off the road, you are going to hit something … so who knows.

The discussion my be irrelevant because the plane trees are now being decimated by the spread of a fungus and millions in research have not found a cure for the iconic trees.

The stretch of road in the photo is from St. Remy de Provence to Eygalières where some vandal decided the trees would look better with the National Front painted on.