Dutch elm disease emptied the village squares of Alicante province of their elms, and in Millena, a village of around two hundred people in El Comtat, one is still standing. The field elm in front of the Church of Sant Josep is locally called the thousand-year elm, and is more likely two to three centuries old. Its trunk is 5.30 metres round, its heavy limbs propped on pillars after a snowfall broke one. The village signposts it at the entrance to town. Free, in the open church square.
0 / 1 in Millena besucht
Foto: Joanbanjo (CC BY-SA 3.0)
1
Olmo centenario de Millena (Om centenari de Millena)
Field Elm (Ulmus minor) · roughly 300 years · Church square (Plaza de la Iglesia), village centre of Millena
Dutch elm disease killed the village elms of Alicante province one square at a time, and by two independent accounts this is the last healthy one still standing in a plaza. It grows in front of the Church of Sant Josep in Millena, a village of around two hundred people in El Comtat, and the village signposts it at the entrance to town.
Locally it is the Om mil·lenari, the thousand-year elm. It is not that old. The published estimates say about three hundred years, and one travel writer who visited suggests it may be younger still: elms were planted in Spanish town squares to mark the Cádiz Constitution of 1812, and he wonders whether this is one of them. That is his theory rather than a record, so hold both ideas loosely, somewhere between two and three centuries.
The measurements are firmer. The trunk is 5.30 metres round, the tree about ten metres tall with a crown up to eleven metres across, which is a great deal of wood for a field elm. Some of it has proved too heavy. A limb broke under snow, pillars were added to hold up the rest, and a later snowfall damaged one of the pillars.
It is not on the Valencian catalogue of monumental trees, but it is protected under the region's 2006 law on monumental trees. The most recent account we found is from 2016. If you have been since, tell us how it looks.
Mehr lesen und Anfahrt →