Cedar of Sibline Crowned Tree of the Year 2025 After Surviving Wars, Explosions, and a $180K Parking Spot

The Tree of the Year 2025 Is a 47-Year-Old Lebanese Cedar That Survived Three Civil Wars, One Port Explosion, and the World’s Most Expensive Parking Lot
By Our Correspondent, Beirut, with additional reporting from places that still pretend trees matter

BEIRUT—In a ceremony that felt equal parts Arbor Day and war-crimes tribunal, the International Union for Very Tall Plants crowned the “Cedar of Sibline” the Tree of the Year 2025 last Thursday. The 18-metre specimen, perched on a limestone ridge south of Beirut, beat out a selfie-hungry Californian redwood and a Singaporean “smart tree” that tweets its own soil-moisture levels. Its qualifications? Remaining upright since 1978 while everything around it—regimes, currencies, entire city blocks—folded like cheap deckchairs.

Global tastemakers applauded the choice as “a symbol of endurance in a splintering world,” which is PR-speak for “even a plant can outlast our attention span.” Delegates from 47 nations flew in on carbon-offset guilt trips, posed beneath the cedar’s scorched lower branches, and promised reforestation funds that will arrive sometime after the heat death of the universe.

The cedar’s résumé is, frankly, obscene. It endured the tail end of Lebanon’s civil war, when militias used adjacent orchards for rocket practice; the 2006 war, when Israeli leaflets politely informed the tree it might be incinerated; and the 2020 port explosion whose shockwave stripped half its needles. Most recently, it watched a Gulf-funded real-estate consortium pave its root zone for a “boutique” parking garage—price per slot: $180,000, valet included. The tree survived because a local grandmother chained herself to it, armed with nothing but arthritis and profanity. UNESCO has since declared her an “intangible heritage obstacle to capital.”

International implications are sprouting like mould after rain. First, the cedar’s victory is a diplomatic Rorschach test: Western NGOs hail it as proof nature can still shame the market; Gulf investors interpret the same outcome as proof nothing can stop the market; and the Lebanese government simply requested the tree be taxed retroactively. Second, the award triggered a flurry of copycat campaigns. In Brazil, gangs now tattoo “Tree of 2026” on threatened kapoks, thereby inflating their black-market value. Sweden has dispatched forestry drones to nominate the tallest pine before Russia does. Meanwhile, the U.K. parliament debated whether a Brexit oak deserves consideration, then adjourned for lack of agreement on which century it should represent.

The broader significance—beyond the obvious “planet prefers plants to people” punchline—is geopolitical. The cedar’s win was decided by online voters who needed a break from doomscrolling Gaza, Ukraine, and the latest cryptocurrency collapse. In effect, the international community outsourced its conscience to a conifer. The tree now appears on NFTs minted in Dubai, tote bags screen-printed in Bangladesh, and motivational LinkedIn posts composed by middle-managers in Ohio who have never seen snow. Its likeness even graces the new design of the IMF’s Lebanese bond prospectus, subtitled “Growth Is Possible, Just Add Water (Terms and Conditions Apply).”

Of course, the cedar itself remains indifferent to the hoopla. When asked for comment, it silently extruded a bead of resin—roughly translated: “I was here before your borders, and I’ll be here after your borders become somebody else’s borders.” Botanists confirm this is the first recorded instance of arboreal shade.

In the gift shop hastily erected at the site, you can buy cedar-scented candles (“Essence of Survival, $22”), cedar-scented air-fresheners for Range Rovers (“Smell Like Resistance”), and cedar-scented NFTs (“Own a Pixel, Save the Planet, Gas Fees Extra”). All proceeds go toward an endowment fund, 12 percent of which may eventually reach the tree, minus administrative costs and the inevitable corruption surcharge.

Conclusion: The 2025 Tree of the Year is not just a botanical survivor; it is the world’s newest guilt sponge. It absorbs carbon, headlines, and our collective embarrassment in equal measure. Long after the last delegate’s jet lag fades, the Cedar of Sibline will still be standing—slightly more famous, marginally more threatened, and utterly unimpressed. If that isn’t a metaphor for our century, perhaps the next explosion will provide a clearer one.