The Chabuca Granda Cedar

In September 1977 a singer put her arms around this cedar and the men with the saws went home. Chabuca Granda had been told the tree outside her house on Avenida 28 de Julio was coming down, and she made herself the obstacle, on the third of the month, which was her own birthday. Afterwards she wrote it a poem, "Cancion al arbol del canto". The cedar is still on the pavement of the sixth block, in front of the house. In 2020 Miraflores entered it as Registro 001-2020-MM, the first tree in the district's heritage register and so far the only one, under an ordinance that weighs height, trunk diameter, whether the species is a vulnerable one, and what a tree means to the people living around it. Spanish cedar clears that third bar almost everywhere it grows: Cedrela odorata is a prized cabinet timber and is logged hard across its range, which is not a common way for a tree to end up protected on a city street corner in the middle of a residential block. Nobody has published its age, its height or its girth, and we would rather leave the field empty than put a number in it. If you know when this cedar went into the pavement, or have seen anything that dates it, tell us and it goes on the page.