The register calls this one number I, which turns out to be a filing decision rather than a ranking: of the four figs on the square it has the third-thickest trunk. Seven and a half metres round, 23 metres tall, a crown of 33 metres. In most European cities that is the biggest tree in town. Here it is the middle of the group. No source dates it. The square took its present shape in 1918 and its figs are described together as over a century old, which is as close as the record comes to a number for this one. What it does have is the ground under it. A mature Ficus macrophylla lifts its roots into buttresses and lets more down from the branches, so the base is a low tangle of grey props rather than a trunk with a clean edge to put a tape around. The 7.6 metres is a measurement of that tangle, taken where it is tightest. Alicante has decided these trees are worth explaining. The city has fenced their root plates, because visitors climb them for photographs, and installed plaques beside them, making this square one of five signposted stops on a route through its monumental ficus.
This tree looks much the same in every month of the year, so there is no season to chart.
Plaza Gabriel Miró, AlicanteAt the northern end of the square. Of the two smaller figs it is the thicker, seven and a half metres round and twenty-three metres tall; the low spreading one stands about thirty-five metres to its west.
Free, open public plaza in the city centre, no gate or opening hours
TRAM Luceros stop (lines L1-L4), roughly 10 minutes on foot
Sources
Where the facts on this page come from.
- In the official register: Catálogo de Árboles Monumentales y Singulares de la Comunitat Valenciana (Generalitat Valenciana), no. 3036
- dadesobertes.gva.es
- alicantepress.com
- alicante.es
- Generalitat Valenciana, Catalogo de Arboles Monumentales y Singulares de la Comunitat Valenciana (Ley 4/2006), no. 3036