The Chestnut of the Pla de Sant Nicolau

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.