Winds topple Marie Antoinette's tree at Versailles

It survived the French Revolution and a devastating 1999 storm, but high winds have finally toppled a towering beech tree planted for Marie Antoinette more than two centuries ago at Versailles Palace.

The 82-foot (25-meter) high purple beech, one of the last trees in a hamlet dedicated to the former queen in the vast palace park, was felled Friday by an unusually fierce winter gust, the park's head gardener said.

The 223-year-old tree's collapse, which also exhumed a jumble of roots, earth and grass, was the latest blow to the ex-queen's Versailles vegetation after her most cherished oak tree died in a 2003 heat wave.

The beech, a facus sylvatica purpura, featured its own plaque showing that it was planted in 1786.

A decade ago, it had been damaged but survived an even more destructive storm that knocked down thousands of trees at Versailles.
Following that tempest, the beech's roots had grown moldy and shrunk so much that they could no longer counterbalance the weight of its 22-meter (72-foot) span of branches, Baraton said.

The beech will get an unceremonious finish: It will be cut up and sold to paper makers. Sort of like what happened to Marie Antoinette herself when she was guillotined and dumped into a wagon to be carted off.