Navarra protects 47 trees as Natural Monuments, and six stand within half an hour of Pamplona: five pollarded valley oaks and a giant sequoia at the regional government's palace. A second, separate Navarra register catalogues singular trees along the Arga itself, the river through the city, and eight more stand on its public riverside path between Rochapea and Zabaldika, mostly black poplars, one pollarded for firewood, one still wearing the brackets of an old electrical line. Fourteen trees in all, none of them dated, across two registers and one river valley.
0 / 14 visitati a Pamplona
1
The Sequoia of the Palacio de Navarra
Giant Sequoia (Sequoiadendron giganteum) · Centre
There is a Californian redwood in the middle of Pamplona and it belongs to the government. The Palacio de Navarra on Avenida Carlos III is the seat of the regional administration, and the walled garden behind its facade holds a giant sequoia that Navarra declared a Natural Monument in 1991, one of the first tranche. It is the only one of the region's 47 declared trees inside a city. Sequoiadendron giganteum reached Europe as seed in 1853 and inside a decade it was the tree every institution and estate in the west wanted, so a nineteenth century administrative palace with a redwood in its garden is not an eccentricity, it is exactly what the fashion produced. What Navarra does not publish is any measurement of it at all, or an age. The register carries the species, the place, the year of declaration and a coordinate and stops there. The garden is enclosed, which makes this a tree you generally see over a wall from the avenue rather than stand under, and it is tall enough for that to work.
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2
The Oak of Orkin
Pedunculate Oak (Quercus robur) · often called millenary on the strength of its size, with no published figure · Ultzama
This is the tree people in Navarra mean when they say the big oak. It stands at Orkin, in the Ultzama valley north of Pamplona, and it is habitually described as millenary, which is a reputation built on its size rather than any measurement: Navarra's register gives it a species, a place, a declaration year and a coordinate and nothing else, so nobody has published a girth, a height or an age for it. What is described consistently is the shape. It has been pollarded, cut back repeatedly over generations in the way Basque and Navarrese villages managed their oaks for firewood and charcoal, and the result is a broad rounded crown on a trunk that flares at the base into a mass of roots big enough that animals den in the gaps under them. Ultzama is wet Atlantic country, beech and oak and pasture rather than anything Mediterranean, 20 kilometres and a different climate from Pamplona. Navarra declared it a Natural Monument in 2009. If anybody has put a tape round it, we would like the number.
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3
The Oak of Eltzaburu
Pedunculate Oak (Quercus robur) · Ultzama
Lightning took one of its main limbs and it is still standing. The oak at Eltzaburu is reported at over 26 metres tall with a base close to two metres across, and it carries the marks of two separate attempts on its life: it escaped being felled, at some point nobody has dated, and it lost a major branch to a strike years ago. Navarra declared it a Natural Monument in 1991, in the first group, and it is number 10 on the list. It is the most reachable of the oaks on this page, because there is a marked walking route to it from the beech wood at Sastrain, which means somebody has decided people should come and look, and has put up signs. The Ultzama valley is the wet green half of Navarra, where the Atlantic weather gets over the watershed and beech and oak grow the way they do in the Basque country rather than the way they do on the Ebro. No age is published for it, as none is published for any of Navarra's 47 declared trees.
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4
The Oaks of Jauntsarats
Pedunculate Oak (Quercus robur) · Basaburua
Two of them, declared separately, about 570 metres apart in the same wood. Navarra listed the oaks of Jauntsarats as Roble de Jauntsarats I and Roble de Jauntsarats II in 1991, giving each its own Natural Monument declaration rather than treating them as a pair, which is how this register works: it protects individuals and it does not group. They stand in the Basaburua valley in the wet northern country, in woodland rather than in the open, which is unusual for a Navarrese monumental oak; most of the declared ones are in pasture or on village common ground where they were kept as isolated trees for shade and fodder. Two giants inside a beech and oak wood are a different experience, because you come on them rather than see them from a distance. Navarra publishes no measurement and no age for either. This entry covers the first of the two and the second is 570 metres south; both are on the same walk, which makes Jauntsarats the only place near Pamplona where two declared Natural Monument trees can be seen in one outing.
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5
The Oak of Azanza
Downy Oak (Quercus pubescens) · Goni
This one is a different oak from the others, and the difference is the whole reason it is worth a separate stop. Quercus pubescens, the downy oak, is the dry-country oak of southern Europe: smaller leaves with felted undersides, tolerant of thin limestone soils and long summers, and it takes over from pedunculate oak as you come south and west out of the Atlantic valleys. Azanza sits in the Goni valley on that boundary, in the hills below the Sierra de Andia, and the change in the trees over 20 kilometres of road from Ultzama is the clearest lesson in Navarrese geography anybody could ask for. Navarra declared this tree a Natural Monument in 2009 and, as with all 47, published a species, a place, a year and a coordinate and no measurements at all. That is the honest state of it: an officially protected oak of a species the north of Navarra does not grow, standing where two climates meet, and nobody has said how big or how old it is. If you have measured it, tell us.
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6
The Quejigo of Garinoain
Portuguese Oak (Quercus faginea) · Valdorba
Go south from Pamplona instead of north and the oaks change again. The quejigo, Quercus faginea, is the Iberian oak of the middle ground between the wet north and the dry Ebro plain: it holds its dead leaves through winter and drops them only when the new ones push, so a quejigo in February is a brown tree in a bare landscape, which is how you find one. This is the declared Natural Monument of the Valdorba, a district of small villages and Romanesque churches in the hills south of Pamplona that almost nobody visits, and Navarra listed it in 2009. Like every tree on this page it comes with a species, a place, a year and a coordinate and no measurements whatsoever. The Valdorba is worth the drive on its own account, and going out to look at a protected oak is as good a reason as any to end up in it. If you know its girth, or anyone has dated it, tell us and we will put the number on this page.
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7
The Pollarded Poplar of Rochapea
Black Poplar (Populus nigra) · Rochapea, Pamplona
Somebody cut the top off this poplar, and it grew to 26 metres anyway. Navarra's river-park register lists it as a trasmocho, a pollard: a tree beheaded at height so the regrowth can be cut again and again for firewood, fence posts and fodder. That is farm work rather than landscaping, and it means this trunk was earning its keep long before the banks of the Arga became a park. The register puts the trunk at 150 centimetres across, which works out at roughly four and a half metres round, and the 2013 survey that recorded it measured the height at 26 metres. Pollards are usually squat things. This one is not.
It stands on the riverside walk through Rochapea, the low district by the water where Pamplona came down from its walls to do its washing while the old town kept to the ridge. The path is free and open at any hour.
Two things we cannot tell you. Only the Navarra register describes this tree, so there is no second account to check it against, and that survey is now over a decade old. And nobody has recorded an age. Cutting a tree's head off scrambles the usual way of reading how long a poplar has stood, so we are not going to guess at one. If you know more about this tree, tell us.
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8
The Poplar of Txantrea
Black Poplar (Populus nigra) · Magdalena, Txantrea, Pamplona
Navarra's register describes this tree in eight words, and then uses the same eight words for a different poplar a kilometre and a half away in Villava: a poplar of large diameter, over a metre through, vigorous. That is the entire official record of it. No height, no age, no story, and nothing that would tell it apart from its neighbours if you were standing under it.
What the phrase does give you is a floor. Over a metre of diameter means more than three metres around the trunk, and because the register stopped at the greater-than sign rather than taking the measurement, the real figure is probably larger than that. It is a big riverside poplar on a river that grows them.
It stands on the Magdalena stretch of the Arga in Txantrea, on the riverside path that runs the length of the valley through Pamplona, free and open at all hours. The plane tree with the old electrical cable brackets on its trunk is about 90 metres along the same path.
Only the register describes this tree, and its survey dates from 2013. Nobody has recorded an age for it, and nobody has taped the trunk properly either. If you have walked out and looked at it, tell us what you found.
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9
The Plane of Txantrea
London Plane (Platanus x acerifolia) · Magdalena, Txantrea, Pamplona
This plane tree once did a second job as a utility pole. Navarra's register records it as a large plane carrying old supports for electrical cables, the brackets still fixed to the trunk long after whatever they held came down. It is the kind of detail a register almost never gives, and it makes this the one tree on this stretch of the Arga you can identify without a map.
The measurements are respectable on their own. The register puts the trunk between 120 and 130 centimetres across, so somewhere between roughly 3.8 and 4.1 metres round, which is a serious plane by any standard and an unusually big one to find standing on a riverbank rather than on a boulevard.
Pamplona's own survey of its old trees writes warmly about the planes of the Rochapea bridge, shade for the women who washed clothes in the Arga, and about stands of roughly century-old planes along these banks. It never names this tree, so treat that as the mood of the place rather than as evidence about this trunk.
And that is the honest gap: the register is the only source that describes this specific tree, its survey dates from 2013, and nobody has recorded an age. The cable brackets, at least, are something anyone standing there can check. If you know more, tell us.
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10
The Poplars of Erripagaña
Black Poplar (Populus nigra) · Erripagaña, Burlada
A Lombardy poplar is usually a narrow column, the exclamation mark of the roadside. One of these two is close to four metres round.
The register records a pair at this point on the river path at Erripagaña, both of them large and both vigorous, and it takes the trouble to measure them separately: 120 centimetres across for the bigger trunk, 90 for the smaller. Converted, that is roughly 3.8 metres around the first and about 2.8 around the second. Both figures come from diameters rather than a tape passed round the trunk, so read them as close rather than exact. They stand together, which is why they are one entry here rather than two: you walk to one place and both are in front of you, the thick one and the merely large one.
The setting is the Arga on its way through Burlada, on the continuous riverside walk that runs from Pamplona out through the comarca towns. Free, open, flat, and about as easy a tree visit as this site has.
What nobody has written down is how old either of them is, and the only description of them anywhere is the 2013 register survey. If you know this pair, or have measured them, tell us.
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11
The Broken-Limbed Poplar of Villava
Black Poplar (Populus nigra) · Villava / Atarrabia
One of this poplar's three main limbs is dead, and the bark has come away from parts of the trunk. Navarra's surveyors catalogued it as a singular tree anyway, and wrote the damage into the record rather than around it: a poplar of large diameter, three main branches, one of them dead, partially debarked.
That description is worth more than a tidier one would be. Of the three big poplars on this stretch of the Villava riverside it is the only one you can identify from the path without counting your steps, because the others are recorded as nothing more than large and vigorous. A three-limbed crown with one bare limb in it, and pale wood showing through where the bark has gone, is a silhouette rather than a category.
The register gives the trunk as over a metre across without finishing the measurement, which puts it over three metres round at the very least and probably a good deal more. It stands on the public path along the Arga through Villava, free and open, flat walking from Pamplona.
The survey behind all of this dates from 2013 and no other source describes the tree, so the dead limb and the bare patches are thirteen years old as facts. Nobody has recorded an age either. If you walk out and see how it is doing now, tell us.
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12
The Poplar of Villava (south)
Black Poplar (Populus nigra) · Villava / Atarrabia
Three poplars big enough to be catalogued stand within 400 metres of each other on the Villava riverside, and this is the one the surveyors had nothing particular to say about. Its entry in Navarra's register reads: poplar of large diameter, over a metre, vigorous. The same sentence, word for word, describes another poplar a kilometre and a half away in Txantrea.
So take the sentence for what it is. Over a metre across means over three metres round the trunk, and since the register stopped at the greater-than sign rather than finishing the measurement, that number is a floor and not a figure. Vigorous is the surveyor's word for a tree in good health in 2013.
What carries it is the walk. Villava sits on the Arga upstream of Pamplona, on the valley road that pilgrims have come down for a thousand years, and the riverside path through it is flat, free and continuous, with the broken-limbed poplar 240 metres north and a third big one beyond that.
Nobody has dated this tree, nobody has measured the trunk properly, and no source but the register describes it at all. If you can add anything to that, we would like to hear it.
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13
The Poplar of Villava (north)
Black Poplar (Populus nigra) · Villava / Atarrabia
The register gives this tree four words and no numbers: a Lombardy poplar of large diameter. Every other tree catalogued along this river carries a measurement of some kind, a height, a diameter, at least a greater-than sign. This one carries none, so we are not going to put a figure on the trunk. Large is what the surveyor wrote and large is what you get.
The form is the useful part. A Lombardy poplar grows as a tall narrow column rather than a spreading crown, which is what makes rows of them visible across a valley from a long way off, and a thick one is a column that has been standing a while.
It stands at the northern end of the Villava riverside path, about 400 metres beyond the other two catalogued poplars on that stretch, on the flat free walk that runs along the Arga from Pamplona out through the comarca towns.
Nobody has recorded an age for it, nobody has recorded a girth, and no source other than the 2013 register survey describes it at all. This is the thinnest record of the eight trees on this river. Anything you can add, we will take.
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14
The Poplars of Zabaldika
Black Poplar (Populus nigra) · Zabaldika, Esteribar (comarca de Pamplona, not Pamplona itself)
Nobody wrote down how many trees are here. The register's entry reads chopos de gran tamaño, large poplars, plural, with no count and no measurement attached to it. Elsewhere on this river the same surveyors were precise enough to record two trunks at one point and give a diameter for each. Here they saw a group worth cataloguing and left it at that, so it may be two poplars, it may be three, it may be a small stand, and we are not going to pick a number to make the page tidier.
What is certain is where they are. This is the far eastern end of the river park, at Zabaldika in Esteribar, where the Arga comes down out of the hills and the path has long since left Pamplona's streets behind. It is the one tree entry on this river that is a walk rather than a stroll, and it should be treated as its own outing rather than tacked onto the others at the end of a long afternoon.
No age, no girth, no height, no count, and no source but a 2013 survey. If you make it out there, tell us what is standing and how many. On this one, almost anything you can tell us is more than we have.
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