The Araucaria of Plaza de Santa Teresa

A small grove of monkey puzzle trees once filled the centre of this fenced nineteenth-century garden. Only one is left; its neighbours were removed over the years and replaced with younger stock that never caught up, leaving Araucaria araucana standing alone among the obelisk and monument of the Panteón de Quijano. At around thirty metres and past its first century, it still wears the reptilian, tightly overlapping leaf scales that gave the species its English name and once armoured it against browsing dinosaurs on the volcanic slopes of central Chile, long before Alicante existed. The city's own tree catalogue puts it at 95 years; the contractor who now maintains the garden says closer to 100. Neither figure is precise enough to argue with the other. It is one of three separate Araucaria species scattered across Alicante's public squares, alongside the Norfolk Island pine of Plaza de Calvo Sotelo and a far taller Cook pine over Plaza de Galicia. None of the three shares a square with either of the others, which says something about how whoever planted this city's gardens liked to spread a good conifer around. The garden is fenced but not locked: an iron railing, a short staircase, open daily.