The Blue Gum on the Hotel Road

Seven metres and fifteen centimetres around the trunk, which is more than any other tree on this page and more than most trees in Portugal. This blue gum sits on the access road to the Palace Hotel near the old forest nursery, forty-five metres tall with a crown thirty-two metres across, and it was classified for what the state politely calls great ornamental and landscape value, meaning somebody looked at it and could not walk past. Eucalyptus globulus is the tree Portugal has an argument about. It arrived from Tasmania in the middle of the nineteenth century, it grows faster than anything native, and it now covers around a quarter of the country's forest area feeding the pulp mills, which is why it is blamed for fires and for draining water tables. That national row makes a specimen like this one easy to overlook. Judge it as an individual instead: a century and a half old, a trunk you cannot get your arms a third of the way around, and bark that peels off in long ribbons to leave a smooth grey and cream column. The leaves smell of eucalyptus oil when you crush a fallen one, and the young growth on a blue gum is a different shape and a different colour from the adult leaves above it.