The Ash of Santa Marina

Somebody cut the top off this tree and it is still the largest ash in Cordoba. What stands on the north side of the church of Santa Marina is a heavy old trunk carrying thin, sparse regrowth and not much leaf, about nine and a half metres of it in total. By trunk perimeter it has been recorded as the biggest of its species in the city twice: in a 1984 book on Cordoba's trees, and again in the 2002 provincial inventory of singular trees. The age is argued rather than documented. Rafa Tamajon, the local botanist who has written most about these trees, reads it as centenarian from its growth pattern and the history of the site, but there is no ring count and no planting record, so somewhere between one and one and a half centuries is as precise as anyone can honestly be. The trunk carries visible decay and the tree is described as declining. That is worth knowing, because it is the argument for going now rather than eventually. Ash wants damp ground and Cordoba is not damp country, which is part of why one of this size got written down here at all. A practical note: the sources place it on the plaza and on the church's north side, and that is as close as the pin goes. Walk the north wall and look for the big trunk under the small crown.