The Strangler Fig of the Botanical Garden

In October 2018 storm Leslie tore through Coimbra's botanical garden, brought down twelve trees in the upper garden and left this fig, in the words of the garden's director, damaged in the crown and badly deformed. It is still standing. Visitors' photographs of it keep arriving, the latest from October 2026. The crown is why anyone worried. António Gouveia, the director, called the tree very emblematic of the garden for the reach of that canopy, about a hundred metres round. The tree rises to about 20 metres beside the Estufa Grande, the garden's great glasshouse, and its branches travel much further sideways than up. It is a Moreton Bay fig, an Australian species that in its home forests can start life as a seedling in another tree's branches, which is where the strangler name comes from. Coimbra has two famous ones. The other grows at Quinta das Lágrimas, about a kilometre and a half away across the Mondego, and was Portugal's Tree of the Year in 2025. Its age rests on a single line. A Portuguese forestry site says it is thought to have been planted by the gardener Francisco Cabral in 1877, which would make it roughly 150 years old. No second source we found repeats the date, so read it as the garden's account rather than a record. If you know more, tell us. Parts of the garden have been under refurbishment and the entry terms were not confirmed, so check before you go.