This magnolia is probably the biggest of its kind in Barcelona, and it grows in a garden built for a maternity hospital that no longer delivers babies. The Jardins de la Maternitat sit on the old Can Cavaller estate, developed from 1889 into a Modernista hospital complex by the architect Camil Oliveres, and the grounds kept their original planting long after the wards changed use. The magnolia itself has no recorded planting date, only a description in the city's own tree records as centenaria, over a hundred years old, which places its origin somewhere in the hospital's early decades. It has since spread past 12 metres tall and over 15 metres wide, a canopy wide enough to shade a small plaza on its own, among roughly forty tree species catalogued across the gardens. Southern magnolias flower in early summer with blooms that can reach 30 centimetres across, a single-species argument for why a hospital garden was worth keeping intact once the hospital itself moved on.
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Getting there
Jardins de la Maternitat, Travessera de les Corts 159, 08028 Barcelona
You can recognise it by the crown, over 15 metres across on a tree only 12 metres tall, wide enough to shade a small plaza by itself. It stands in the Jardins de la Maternitat, probably the largest magnolia in the city.
Les Corts (Metro L3), 6 min walk
In bloomIn fruit
June into July, when its blooms open up to 30 centimetres across
The line is our estimate of how much there is to see, not a measurement. Typical for this species where this tree stands; exact weeks shift with the year.
Sources
Where the facts on this page come from. The story was written with AI from these sources, and readers who know the tree correct it.