The Cedro de Sao Jose

This tree is the reason a Mexican cypress is named after Portugal. When Philip Miller described the species in 1768 he was working from specimens growing at Bucaco, so he called it Cupressus lusitanica, and the Portuguese returned the compliment by calling it cedro-do-bucaco. Both names are wrong twice over. It is a cypress and not a cedar, and it comes from the mountains of Mexico and Central America, carried back by the Carmelite friars who enclosed this hillside in 1628. The plaque at its foot says it was planted between 1628 and 1650, which makes it about 380 years old and the oldest tree in the forest. It no longer looks the part, and you should know that before you walk down. Cyclone Gong hit Bucaco in January 2013, destroyed roughly 40 percent of the forest and took the top off this one: it stood 32.9 metres before the storm and was measured at 14 metres after. What is left is a trunk five and a half metres round, split and silvered, held inside an ornate iron railing, with green still coming out of the wreckage above. Two popes once threatened excommunication for damaging a tree here. This one took its damage from the weather.