The Pica-Pica Tree of the Teatre Grec
Montjuic, Sants-Montjuic
Barcelona planted this tree for its flowers and got itching powder with them. The lagunaria is known across Catalonia as the pica-pica, the scratch-scratch, because the inside of its seed capsules is packed with fine bristles that break off into skin and stay there. The flowers are the reason anyone forgives it. Once a year the whole crown fills with thousands of pink blooms shaped like mallows, which is a strange thing to find fifteen metres up, because flowers like that normally belong to weeds on a roadside verge. The city's own assessment says no other lagunaria in Barcelona, and fewer than half a dozen have ever been planted here, has grown into anything close to this shape. It went into the ground in 1923, while the whole hillside was being rebuilt from quarry workings into gardens for the 1929 International Exposition, and it now stands to the left of the amphitheatre below the restaurant terrace with a trunk 2.4 metres round. The species comes from Norfolk Island and Lord Howe Island in the Pacific, where it grows on sea cliffs. Time the visit, because the gardens shut to the public from 15 June to 7 August for the festival that fills the theatre.
From people who stood here
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Getting there
Jardins del Teatre Grec, Passeig de Santa Madrona 38, 08038 Barcelona
You can recognise it by the thousands of pink mallow flowers that fill the whole crown once a year, fifteen metres up, and by the trunk 2.4 metres round. It stands to the left of the Teatre Grec amphitheatre, below the restaurant terrace.
Free, public garden. Open 08.00 to 21.00 from 1 April to 31 October and 08.00 to 19.00 from 1 November to 31 March. Closed to the public entirely from 15 June to 7 August for the Grec festival.
Poble Sec (Metro L3), 10 min walk uphill, or Espanya (Metro L1/L3) and the Montjuic escalators
In bloom
June, when the whole crown fills with thousands of pink mallow flowers
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.
- In the official register: Arbres d'interès local, Ajuntament de Barcelona
- barcelona.cat
- bcnsostenible.cat
- catacultural.com
- openstreetmap.org
- guia.barcelona.cat
- Ajuntament de Barcelona, Arbres d'interes local (the designated singular-tree register, not the street inventory), no. 99400455071
