Walking up Avenue Francus, which was just a path back then, we arrive at an intersection of some importance, important enough to have had its own name, La Ronde Francus. Look at the photo and you can see that this is more circle than cross.
Here Avenue Francus crosses the Drève de Lorraine, another major thoroughfare, though now much shortened. It once ran all the way to Joli-Bois, now in Waterloo. Beyond the crossing, the route becomes Verdunningsdreef, a timber extraction track. It is tarmacked, clear evidence that machinery still uses it. Thinning continues here, with many of the alien larch, formerly planted as a fast-growing cash crop, now being removed.
And what of the Bouquet jubilaire?
Stevens does not show it on the 1908 edition of his map, but it appears on the 1917 revision. It was an arboreal memorial, planted to mark Belgium’s 75th anniversary in 1905. A deliberate cluster of trees placed beside an important junction, where it would be seen by many.
In 1908 Stevens probably felt there was nothing yet worth recording. The trees were too young, too slight. By 1917, they were clearly imposing enough to deserve a name.
What was planted, and is it still there?
I went to look. Four oak trees remain, three are marked in the photo, all of the right age, with several old stumps nearby, standing among younger beech. The planting was dense, unusually so for oak, a tree that prefers space. Stevens’ map suggests a true bouquet, several oaks planted together as a single commemorative act. Over time, some would have failed, others felled or thinned, until the memorial quietly dissolved back into the forest.
The gesture was temporary. The place remains.