The Casuarinas of the Plaza de Jerónimo Páez

Three trees that read as pines from across the square and are not related to pines at all. What hangs off a casuarina in fine green threads is jointed twig, not needle; the leaves are reduced to rings of scales at each joint, the tree flowers, and the resemblance to a conifer is coincidence. In wind they hiss rather than rustle, which is why the species travels under the name whistling pine in half the countries that grow it. The city's catalogue of singular trees registers three of them on this small plaza in front of the Archaeological Museum and puts the tallest above thirty metres. It gives no age, and no other source supplies one. An independent description of the square mentions its large casuarinas without measuring anything, which is as far as corroboration goes here, and the plaza was remodelled and refenced in stages that only finished in January 2011, so how much of what stands predates that work is genuinely open. The ground under them is better dated than they are. The plaza takes its name from the Palacio de los Paez de Castillejo, now the Archaeological Museum, and beneath it lies a Roman theatre that an earthquake brought down in the third century. The three grow close together against the museum wall, which makes them one sight with one place to stand rather than three separate errands.