The Tree Yucca of Jardins de Mossen Costa i Llobera

Most people who grow a yucca in their garden are growing something a few metres tall at most. Barcelona's tree yucca, on the seaward path below the steps up to Miramar on Montjuic, is 12 metres tall with a trunk 1.6 metres round, a genuinely tree-sized specimen of a plant most visitors assume tops out at shrub height. Yucca filifera comes from the high desert plateaus of central Mexico, where old wild specimens branch into candelabra shapes and can outlive the people who planted their garden cousins many times over. Barcelona catalogued this one as a tree of local interest only in 2024, with no planting date recorded and no history beyond its own measurements. It grows a short walk from an equally uncommon neighbour, an African coral tree in the cactus gardens above, on a stretch of path built specifically to show off plants that have no business surviving comfortably on a Mediterranean hillside. Nobody has confirmed how old this one actually is, or when it went in. If you know, the city's own catalogue does not.