Brazil's oldest tree cannot tell you how old it is, and nor can anyone else.
Ancient trees in Brazil
Brazil's most famous tree by international record is not its oldest. This page maps 8 remarkable trees across 3 cities in Brazil, each one researched and verified. The oldest of them is O Patriarca (Patriarca da Floresta) in Vassununga, at sources disagree sharply, 600 to 3,000 years.
The Cajueiro de Pirangi, a single cashew whose branches root wherever they touch the ground, has spread across roughly 8,500 square metres near Natal and held the Guinness record for the largest cashew tree since 1994, at the modest age of about 138. The genuinely old trees keep quieter company: O Patriarca, a jequitiba-rosa in the cerrado of Vassununga State Park, is called the country's oldest by a press that cannot agree whether that means 600 years or more than 3,000. Rio de Janeiro supplies the range in between, a sumauma linked to Tom Jobim, a fig tree with a disputed two centuries behind it, a baobab that arrived on ships from Africa long before anyone thought to write its age down. Three cities mapped so far, eight trees, from a single record-holding cashew to a rainforest giant nobody can date.
Every mapped city in Brazil
1Rio de Janeiro6 trees · oldest disputed, over 200 years2Pirangi1 tree · oldest about 138 years3Vassununga1 tree · oldest sources disagree sharply, 600 to 3,000 years
8 species grow in Brazil
Figs and mulberries Fig 1
Southern hemisphere Kapok 1
More broadleaf trees African Mahogany 1 · Árvore-do-Imperador 1 · Baobab 1 · Cashew 1 · Jequitiba-rosa 1 · Strangler Fig 1
The oldest tree mapped in Brazil
See every city on the map, or open the map to find what is near you.