Snow fells a willow in the Apothecary Garden that predates the garden's founding in 1706

In the Apothecary Garden, snow has brought down an ancient willow that was growing there even before the botanical garden was founded under Peter I in 1706. It is one of the oldest trees in Moscow.

The willow was not planted deliberately as part of the botanical garden, but had already been growing there for some time. An attempt by botanists to determine the plant's age thirty years ago met with no success: the borer showed that the heartwood of the tree was already rotten. The present-day trunks, which gave way under the weight of yesterday's snowfall, are a younger growth springing from the ancient base, and they are, of course, not three hundred and some years old. But the willow itself, in the days of its grandeur, really was impressive in size: there was even a bench standing around it.

Willows more than a hundred, let alone two hundred, years old are exceedingly rare. Because of the nature of their wood, these are not particularly long-lived trees, but their heightened vitality allows old stumps to put out young shoots, as was the case with the willow in Peter's Apothecary Garden. So this damaged stump, too, will once more send up young growth, which will likewise be part of that very same very old tree.