The Cypress of San Juan de la Cruz

This cypress is not native to Spain, or even to the continent it is usually associated with. Hesperocyparis lusitanica, despite its name, comes from Mexico and Central America, and reached Europe through Carmelite missionaries who brought it first to Portugal, then into Spain's own monastery gardens. One of those Carmelites was San Juan de la Cruz, the mystic and poet, who served as prior of the Convent of the Martyrs here between 1582 and 1588, by his own order's account the calmest and most productive years of his life. Tradition holds he planted this tree himself, using his prior's staff, choosing the species as a personal symbol for reaching heaven. It was here that he shaped the poems he had first composed from memory in a Toledo prison, including the verses that became Dark Night of the Soul. Roughly two decades ago lightning tore away a significant part of the crown, and the tree still shows the damage today, new growth sprouting from the truncated stump rather than a single unbroken trunk. It survives regardless, in a free public garden that still keeps much of the convent's original layout, lake and orchard included.