The Ash of L'Aulet

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.