The roots of the plane tree on the Island of Peilz, Switzerland, plunge into the waters of Lake Geneva. For centuries the Geroplatanos in Greece has quenched its thirst in the spring that rises at its foot.

In Germany, a majestic, solitary oak stands regally in the middle of a field. In Italy, a venerable cypress, said to have been planted by Saint Francis of Assisi in the 13th century, now grows in the middle of a cloister, the heart of the Franciscan monastery built around it.

The linden dance tree in Hemmelsberg, Germany, and the so-called Whiteleaved Oak in England, raise extraordinary curiosity and vitality. Both trees, one lost in the countryside and the other in the centre of a village, attract visitors who seem to find their erstwhile spirit of childhood through contact with them.

A thousand year-old olive tree in Oletta, Corsica, and a spruce named Old Tjikko in Sweden. Both appear to defy time itself. The first, growing majestically in a garden, still produces olives, the second grows wild and has survived the extreme conditions of northern Scandinavia for more than 9,000 years.

The two thousand year-old yews in La Haye-de-Routot, France, just like the clootie or wish tree in Herchies, Belgium, are imbued with a spirituality whose origins have been lost in time. Witnesses to age-old traditions, these trees have grown up with the beliefs that have become attached to them.

In this programme we meet two great survivors, a Californian giant sequoia and a centuries old juniper tree in Japan.