None of these trees is in Girona. The city's own great planting is the Devesa, an avenue of some two thousand five hundred plane trees that are among the tallest in Catalonia, and because they are a grove rather than individuals none of them is on the regional register. What is on it stands in the hills within half an hour's drive: a sessile oak of 38 metres, a chestnut nine metres round behind a hermitage, and two Mediterranean shrubs, a mastic and a strawberry tree, that have been left alone so long they have turned into trees.
0 of 7 visited in Girona
1
The Great Oak of Ca n'Iglesies
Sessile Oak (Quercus petraea) · Osor
Thirty-eight and a half metres is an extraordinary height for a sessile oak anywhere, and this one is doing it in Catalonia. Quercus petraea is a tree of cool northern hillsides that reaches its southern limit in these mountains, and it gets there by growing in the wet shaded valleys of the Guilleries where the Mediterranean stops and something closer to Atlantic forest begins. This one carries a crown 26.5 metres across on a trunk 4.75 metres round, in the valley at Santa Creu d'Horta above Osor. Catalonia declared it a monumental tree in 1990 and it also sits inside the Guilleries designated natural area, so it has two layers of protection on it. Some 480 metres away stands a Spanish black pine of 29 metres that was declared on the same day, which makes this the only stop around Girona where two protected trees are within a short walk of each other. The register lists both as being in normal condition. Neither has a published age, because Catalonia does not record them.
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2
The Chestnut of the Pla de Sant Nicolau
Sweet Chestnut (Castanea sativa) · Sant Miquel de Campmajor
Nine metres and seventy centimetres round, standing behind a hermitage on a plateau in the Rocacorba hills. This is the thickest tree anywhere near Girona by a wide margin, more than twice the trunk of anything else on this page, on a tree only 18 metres tall with a crown 16 metres across; sweet chestnuts do that, going out rather than up and finally hollowing while the shell keeps growing. Catalonia declared it a monumental tree in 1991 and it also lies inside the Muntanyes de Rocacorba designated natural area. The register records its condition as declining, which is the one thing on this page worth knowing before you drive out: a chestnut of that girth in decline may look magnificent or may look like a wreck depending on the year, and the entry was made some time ago. Sweet chestnut is not native to Catalonia in the strict sense. The Romans spread it across the western Mediterranean for the nuts, which fed whole mountain districts through winters when the grain ran out, and the old orchards left behind are where almost every giant chestnut in Europe now stands.
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3
The Ash of L'Aulet
Narrow-Leaved Ash (Fraxinus angustifolia) · Vidreres
A trunk 5.90 metres round is a great deal of ash. Fraxinus angustifolia is the ash of southern Europe, a riverside tree that follows watercourses through country too dry for the northern species, and it was pollarded for centuries across Catalonia because the leafy branches make good fodder and the wood is springy enough for tool handles. Cutting a tree back like that repeatedly is what produces this shape: a short massive trunk carrying a crown that is all regrowth, in this case 23 metres across on a tree 21 metres tall. Catalonia declared it a monumental tree in 2000, one of the later additions. It stands at L'Aulet in the municipality of Vidreres, at the foot of the Selva plain where the water sits close to the surface, which is the only ground an ash of this size could have got to. The register lists it as being in normal condition and gives it no age, as it gives none to any of the 299 trees it protects. If you know when it was last pollarded, that would date it better than anything else could.
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4
The Great Pine of Romanya
Stone Pine (Pinus pinea) · Romanya de la Selva
Thirty and a half metres is very tall for a stone pine, which usually spends its effort going sideways into the flat-topped umbrella everybody recognises. This one went up instead, on a trunk 3.81 metres round with a crown only 18.8 metres across, which is narrow for the height. It stands 330 metres south of Romanya de la Selva, a hamlet on a ridge above the Costa Brava that is best known for what is next to it: the Cova d'en Daina, a megalithic passage grave with a stone circle around it, built somewhere around 3000 BC and one of the best preserved in Catalonia. Whatever this pine's age, the ground it stands on has been a place people go to for five thousand years. Catalonia declared it a monumental tree in 1991 under two names, the Pi Gros d'en Cama and the Pi de Romanya, which is normal for these trees: the register keeps the farm name and the village name side by side because both are in local use. Its condition is recorded as normal and no age is published.
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5
The Mastic of Torrent
Mastic Tree (Pistacia lentiscus) · Torrent
This is a shrub, and Catalonia has protected it by law. Mastic grows all over the dry Mediterranean as waist-high scrub, the stuff you push through on a coastal path, and it is normally counted in bushes rather than trunks. This one is 5.5 metres tall with a trunk 1.90 metres round and a crown 8 metres across, which for the species is off the scale, and it happens beside the junction of the C-255 and the GI-652 outside Torrent, where anybody can stop and look at it. Catalonia declared it a monumental tree in 1991. Mastic is the plant that gives mastic gum, the resin tapped on Chios and chewed for three thousand years, which is where the English word masticate comes from; the Catalan trade never mattered much, so nothing was ever taken from this one. What it took to get here is simply time and nobody clearing the ground. The register records its condition as normal and, as always, no age. A mastic this size is the best argument on this site for the idea that any species becomes remarkable if left alone long enough.
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6
The Strawberry Tree of Can Genoer
Strawberry Tree (Arbutus unedo) · Cruilles
The same thing has happened here as at Torrent, to a different shrub. Arbutus unedo is a coastal Mediterranean plant that most people meet as scrub two or three metres high, and this one is 8.5 metres tall on a trunk 2.38 metres round, which is about as large as the species is known to get. It stands beside the track near Can Genoer, in the hill country of the Baix Emporda, and Catalonia declared it a monumental tree in 2000. The strawberry tree does something almost no other European tree does: it carries flowers and ripe fruit at the same time, in late autumn, so from October to December the crown has white bells hanging on it alongside round red fruit from the previous year's flowering. The fruit is edible and not very good, which is what the species name says outright, since unedo is usually read as a contraction of unum edo, I eat one. The bark is the other thing to look at, a smooth cinnamon red that peels in strips. The register lists its condition as normal and gives no age.
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7
The Great Pine of L'Espinau
Spanish Black Pine (Pinus nigra subsp. salzmannii) · Osor
Some 480 metres from the great oak stands a pine that was protected on the same day. The two trees at Ca n'Iglesies in Osor were both declared monumental in 1990 and both sit inside the Guilleries designated natural area, and together they are the only pair of protected trees within walking distance of each other anywhere near Girona. This one is 29 metres tall with a trunk 3.16 metres round and a crown 16.5 metres across. It is a Spanish black pine, the salzmannii subspecies, which is the mountain pine of inland Iberia and grows on limestone and poor ground where almost nothing else will make timber; its wood was used for ship masts and beams because it grows straight and its resin content makes it slow to rot. Seeing one at 29 metres in the wet valleys of the Guilleries is a little unexpected, since the subspecies is more at home on dry limestone further west. The register lists it as being in normal condition. No age is published, and the pairing with the oak is the reason to make this the stop it is.
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