Cyprus is not a walk. These four trees sit in two districts an hour or more apart by car, and none of them is within reach of another on foot. Three stand beside a chapel, a monastery or a country church, which is not a coincidence: sacred ground is where old trees survive, and it also means nobody charges to see them. The biggest claim belongs to an olive at Xyliatos, thirteen metres round and wider than it is tall.
0 of 4 visited in Cyprus
1
The Sacred Oak of Theoskepasti
Kermes Oak (Quercus coccifera) · roughly 700 years (local tradition) · Kalopanagiotis village, Marathasa valley
The chapel next door is named after what this tree is said to have done. Panagia Theoskepasti means God-covered, and the account told in Kalopanagiotis is that the oak's branches spread far enough over the small 12th century chapel to hide it from raiders passing through the Marathasa valley. Tradition rather than record, but it has carried the name for a long time. The tree is a prinos, the Cypriot word for kermes oak, though one account of the site calls it a holm oak instead, a related but different species, and nobody has settled which it is. If you can tell the two apart on sight, tell us. Local tradition puts the oak at roughly 700 years. Every source repeats that figure and none of them measured it, so read it as a claim rather than a count. What is on record is that the Cyprus Department of Forests holds the tree under protection. It stands in the open yard beside the chapel, a few steps from the Agios Ioannis Lampadistis Monastery, which UNESCO listed in 1985 among the Painted Churches of the Troodos Region. Kalopanagiotis sits on the northern flank of Troodos, about an hour of mountain road from Nicosia, and the oak asks nothing of a visitor: no gate, no ticket, daylight hours.
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2
The Old Olive Tree of Xyliatos
Olive (Olea europaea) · sources disagree: 800 to 1,700 years · Potima area, Xyliatos
This olive is wider around than it is tall. Thirteen metres of trunk circumference against a height of about six, which is roughly what an olive does when it is given enough centuries: the trunk splits, hollows and fuses back on itself while the crown stays low and hard. It is held to be the largest-girth olive on Cyprus, and the oldest. How old is exactly the argument. The Xyliatos Community Council, which campaigned to have the tree protected, says about 1,700 years. A Cypriot tourism site says 800. Neither shows any working, no ring count and no growth-rate calculation, and olives are close to impossible to date anyway, because the old heartwood rots out and leaves nothing continuous to read. Both figures are received, so the honest answer is the range. What is documented is 2004, the year the Department of Forests placed the tree under protection after the council pressed for it. On the council's figure the olive was already old under Byzantine rule and would have stood through Richard the Lionheart's sale of the island in 1191, the Lusignan and Venetian centuries and three hundred years of Ottoman administration. On the tourism figure it starts around that same 1191. It grows in the open at Potima, a named spot in the village, in the foothills near the Xyliatos dam.
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3
The Ancient Laurel of Apostle Philip
Bay Laurel (Laurus nobilis) · roughly 1,000 years by one source, only 'a few centuries' by another · Pente Litharia, west of Omodos
Bay laurel is the herb in the kitchen cupboard, usually a shrub and rarely a tree of any size. This one is eight metres around. It stands at Pente Litharia, Five Rocks, about three kilometres west of Omodos down a minor road, beside the oldest of that village's country churches, the Chapel of Apostle Philip. How old the laurel is depends on who is asked, and the two answers are far apart. A Limassol heritage site calls it roughly 1,000 years. Omodos's own village site will say only that it is a few centuries. Neither counts rings, so the vaguer figure stays vague here rather than being sharpened into the flattering one. Local tradition holds that the site was a shrine to Apollo before it was Christianised, and points at the laurel as what survived the change, laurel being the tree sacred to Apollo in Greek myth. Both accounts repeat that story and neither is archaeology. What is dated is the building: the chapel was renovated in 1773. Height is given as 17 metres on one page and 10 metres on another from the same source, so take the crown as tall rather than measured. It stands in open country with no gate, no ticket and nobody to ask, which is roughly how it has been since somebody first decided this spot was worth a chapel.
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4
The Plane Tree of Ayia Mavri
Oriental Plane (Platanus orientalis) · roughly 800 years by two sources, 1,200 by a third · Between Koilani and Pera Pedi, Krasochoria wine region
Cyprus put this tree on a postage stamp. The national post office's Centennial Trees of Cyprus series records the Oriental plane at Ayia Mavri as about 800 years old, with a trunk 8.20 metres round and a crown reaching 38 metres, and notes that it was formally designated for protection in 2004. A Limassol heritage survey, working from its own measurements, gives the same age and close to the same figures, 8 metres and 36. A third Cypriot site says 1,200 years instead and offers no measurements at all, so the age sits between two sources that agree and one that does not. Planes want their feet wet, which explains the address: the bank of the Kryos river, beside the small Ayia Mavri chapel, on the road linking Koilani to Pera Pedi through the Krasochoria, the wine villages of the southern Troodos. Platanus orientalis is the eastern Mediterranean's own plane, the species that shades village squares from Greece to Anatolia and one parent of the London plane that later took over northern European cities. On the lower estimate this tree was already growing when the Lusignan kings ruled Cyprus, and it has stood through the Venetian, Ottoman and British administrations since. Free, open, and about forty minutes of hill road from Limassol.
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