The Strawberry Tree of Can Genoer

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.