The Araucaria of El Olivar

San Isidro calls this one of the tallest trees in Lima, and it is also the youngest thing in the grove it stands in by about three centuries. The district puts it at 44 metres and roughly 80 years old; the article published when its heritage route opened says 41 metres. Nobody has produced a planting record, only an estimate, so the honest reading is a conifer somewhere between 70 and 90 years old that has grown past everything around it. Everything around it is olives. The Bosque El Olivar is a colonial grove raised from Spanish stock, and one of its trees was planted in the 1630s. The araucaria is a Cook pine from New Caledonia, a Pacific island group most of the way around the world from here, and it arrived in living memory. It carries Registro 001-2020-MSI, the first of three trees San Isidro recognised together in Ordinance 535-MSI in February 2021, and it is a stop on the heritage tree route the district opened in June 2026. One thing to look for while you are under it. Cook pines lean, reliably, and measured across the species worldwide they lean towards the equator. Lima sits 12 degrees south of it, so the tilt, where there is one, runs north.