The Ombu of Placa Prim

This tree looks like it is made of muscle rather than wood, which is close to the truth. The ombu is native to the Pampas grasslands of Argentina, Uruguay and southern Brazil, and its trunk grows soft and fibrous rather than hard, swelling into rippled, root-like folds that store water through dry seasons its South American homeland is prone to. Planted in Placa Prim around 1924, one of three ombus that give this small Poblenou square its character, it has reached 9.5 metres tall with a trunk two and a half metres around at chest height and a crown spreading seven and a half metres wide, all without producing wood dense enough to be useful as timber, which is why ombus rarely get planted for anything but shade and spectacle. The species arrived in Spain as an ornamental import in the early 20th century, popular because nothing else in a European city square looks quite like it. Poblenou was still an industrial district of textile mills when this one went into the ground; the mills are mostly lofts and tech offices now, and the ombu has outlasted the neighbourhood's whole first identity.