The Texas Olive Behind the Paint Shop

Nevada's champion Texas olive grows behind the paint shop. Not on the mall, not by a lecture hall, not anywhere a university would put a specimen tree: it stands on the working side of the UNLV campus, behind the buildings where the maintenance crews are, and no larger Cordia boissieri has been recorded in the state. The Nevada Big Tree Register measured it in 2015 at 40 inches around and 20 feet tall, with a 14-foot spread. The university confirmed the same 20 feet in November 2025 and described what it does through the year: white trumpet flowers that hummingbirds work over, then a fruit that looks like an olive and is not one, and should not be eaten. The species comes from the lower Rio Grande, south Texas and northern Mexico, and is planted across the Southwest for the flowers rather than for anything useful. Two things before you walk out to it. No planting date has been published, so this page gives no age. And our pin is the weakest on this page: we could not place the campus paint shop on a public map, so the coordinates point at the facilities management area, which is a neighbourhood rather than a spot. If you find the tree, send us where it is and the pin gets fixed the same day.