The Sycamore Maple of the Lago da Fonte

Every other tree on this page keeps its colour year round, evergreens collected from Australia, Mexico, California and Portugal's own hillsides behind one wall. This sycamore maple is the exception, and at 36 metres tall it is a remarkably big one, taller than sycamore maples usually reach even in their native central Europe. The register measured it in 2016 at 2.52 metres round and about a century old, standing by the Lago da Fonte, one of Bucaco's several small forest lakes. Acer pseudoplatanus turns a deep gold through October and November before it drops, the one predictable burst of seasonal colour in a forest otherwise built for evergreen permanence, which makes this tree worth timing a visit around in a way none of Bucaco's conifers are. No second source confirms this specific measurement beyond the forest's own register, so it ships flagged. What the register does establish, height and species both, is unusual enough on its own: a European tree, in a forest of imports, has quietly out-grown most of its own kind.