The Coast Coral Tree of Jardins de Mossen Costa i Llobera

Barcelona's biggest cactus garden has one tree in it that is not a cactus at all: a coral tree from southern Africa, 3 metres round with a crown that spreads 20 metres wide, wide enough to shade a meaningful stretch of the six hectare garden by itself. Erythrina caffra flowers before it leafs, bare branches erupting into thick orange-red spikes, a display gardens plant it for the world over. Barcelona added this specimen to its catalogue of trees of local interest in one sitting with eleven others in May 2024, protected for its size rather than any known age. Nobody has dated it. The garden around it opened in 1970 on the seaward slope of Montjuic, named for the Mallorcan poet Miquel Costa i Llobera and built specifically to show off cacti and succulents from the world's dry regions, more than 800 species across terraces that step down toward the port. The coral tree stands out precisely because it does not belong to that theme, a broad-leaved African import in a garden otherwise devoted to spines. Free to enter, no gate, with one of the better views over Barcelona's harbour thrown in.