The Robinia of Cuarto Real de Santo Domingo

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.