The Robinia of Cuarto Real de Santo Domingo
Realejo
Approximate location.
Seasons0 of 4
This robinia has become famous enough in Granada to appear on a national lottery ticket. In 2023 the Spanish blind people's organisation ONCE printed the tree on five million tickets as part of a series celebrating Spain's most emblematic urban trees, alongside the Granada city council's own logo, a considerable amount of public recognition for a species usually valued for fence posts rather than beauty. What makes this specimen worth printing is its trunk: barely 7.5 metres tall, modest for the species, but swollen to roughly 4.6 metres in girth, thick and deeply weathered enough that it reads as far older than its estimated two centuries. It grows directly outside the entrance to the Cuarto Real de Santo Domingo, the best-preserved surviving palace pavilion from Granada's Almohad and early Nazarid period, standing in the small public square in front of the monument rather than requiring the monument's own separate admission fee. Each May its branches fill with hanging clusters of white flowers, drawing a very different kind of attention than its trunk does the rest of the year.
From people who stood here
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Getting there
Plaza de los Campos 6, 18009 Granada
You can recognise it by the trunk, barely 7.5 metres tall but swollen to 4.6 metres round and deeply weathered. It stands outside the entrance to the Cuarto Real de Santo Domingo.
Free, standing in the public entrance square (the Cuarto Real monument itself charges separate admission)
10 min walk from Puerta Real
In bloom
May, when its white flower clusters hang from every branch
The line is our estimate of how much there is to see, not a measurement. Typical for this species where this tree stands; exact weeks shift with the year.
Sources
Where the facts on this page come from. The story was written with AI from these sources, and readers who know the tree correct it.
