The Azores' great trees are imports that found a home: Moreton Bay Figs from Australia and Norfolk Island Pines from the Pacific, planted in the gardens of nineteenth-century São Miguel. In Ponta Delgada the Jardim António Borges keeps a fig the regional government calls colossal, and another fig by the Jardim José do Canto came second in Portugal's Tree of the Year 2026. In Furnas, Parque Terra Nostra's Lady of the Park is about 200 years old by the park's own figure.
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Moreton Bay Fig (Ficus macrophylla) · Sao Jose, Ponta Delgada
In the Azores this is an Australian rubber tree. Botanists know it as a Moreton Bay Fig, and the regional government's own sheet on the Jardim António Borges simply calls it colossal. That sheet, from the Azorean environment directorate, singles it out for its fantastic aerial roots and counts it among the largest and oldest trees on the garden's botanical route.
The fig grows in the south-east part of the garden, along the Central Alley, and carries a botanical label, so it is not hard to find. Its roots are the point. A Moreton Bay Fig lets them down from its branches. Nobody has published its girth or height, so the word colossal is the only measurement on record.
The garden around it was laid out between 1858 and 1861, with planting plans running through the 1860s, and it has belonged to Ponta Delgada's council since 1957. That makes it tempting to date the fig to the first planting. No source we have found does, so its age stays open. If you know when it went in, tell us.
It is good company. The same sheet names a Cook Pine by the tea house, a Bunya Pine, a large jacaranda and a cork oak sheltering an old royal coach. Entry is free, and the garden is about ten minutes on foot from the Portas da Cidade in the centre of Ponta Delgada.
Moreton Bay Fig (Ficus macrophylla) · Sao Sebastiao, Ponta Delgada
In 2026 Portugal voted this fig the second best tree in the country. The national Tree of the Year contest drew more than 18,000 votes, the Diário de Notícias reported, and the Australian rubber tree of Ponta Delgada finished on the podium behind the cedar of Runa in Torres Vedras. Australian rubber tree is the local name for a Moreton Bay Fig.
There is one honest complication. Two more Moreton Bay Figs are mapped inside the Jardim José do Canto, just behind it. The tree on this pin is the one mapped under the contest's exact name, at the street edge of Rua Calço da Má Cara against the garden wall, but nothing on record ties the entry to this trunk. If you voted for it, or know which tree it was, tell us.
No published figure gives its age, girth or height, so the contest result is the strongest thing on record for it. For a tree native to the far side of the world, second place in a country of cork oaks and olives is a fair result.
The street side is public and needs no ticket. The garden behind the wall has its own entrance. It is about ten minutes on foot from the Campo de São Francisco in central Ponta Delgada.
Norfolk Island Pine (Araucaria heterophylla) · 200 years · Furnas
Parque Terra Nostra calls this tree the Lady of the Park and says she is 52 metres tall. That is the park's own figure, published when it entered her for Portugal's Tree of the Year 2026, and it is a remarkable one for a Norfolk Island Pine on the Azores. Nobody independent has measured her, so read it as a claim, not a record.
The park also puts her age at about 200 years, and that is the only estimate there is. Terra Nostra goes back to the 1780s, when Thomas Hickling founded a garden in the Furnas valley, and it was enlarged in 1935. No source connects the Lady to either moment, so her age stays the park's word.
Which araucaria is she? A ring of them stands around the park's thermal pool, and the nomination did not say where she grows. The pin is the single tree mapped under the name A Araucária do Terra Nostra, the best candidate but not a certainty. If you have stood under her and know which one it is, tell us.
She stands in the heart of the Furnas valley, in the park's words, and the park is a paid garden in the village itself, about 45 minutes by car from Ponta Delgada. The result of her national entry is not on record yet.