The Bela-Sombra of Praça António Sardinha

The roots of this one come out of the ground looking like more trunks. The parish council's own account of Praça António Sardinha describes a century-old bela-sombra whose roots resemble trunks converging into one, which is a fair description of what a big Phytolacca dioica does. The base spreads into buttresses and folds until it is hard to say where the tree stops and the ground starts. At 10.9 metres round it is thicker than either of the pair 600 metres away in Jardim António Feijó. Its crown reaches nearly 21 metres across on a tree only 16.2 metres tall, so it is wider than it is high. None of that is wood. The bela-sombra is a giant herb from the South American pampas, all soft water-holding tissue, which is why it swells so quickly and why a careless machine can damage it in a way an oak would shrug off. It stands beside a primary school, and when the square was rebuilt in 2023 the works were laid out around it. It was classified in 2000. The register recorded 105 years at the 2015 measurement, so roughly 115 now, an estimate from size rather than a dated planting.