The Moreton Bay Fig of Jardim Constantino

A garden of a quarter of a hectare in Arroios holds a fig with a 26 metre crown, which accounts for most of the shade in the place. Jardim Constantino is small: a lake, a playground, a statue of Prometheus and two protected trees. This is the wide one. Ficus macrophylla comes from the east coast of Australia and was planted across Lisbon in the late 19th and early 20th centuries for exactly this reason. It grows fast, throws a dense crown, and drops the buttressing roots that make a mature specimen look like it is holding the ground down. At 24 metres tall on a trunk 2.33 metres round, this one has done the job. It has been protected since 1947, which is early. The paperbark standing a few metres away had to wait until 1996 for the same status. The register recorded 107 years when the tree was measured in 2017, so roughly 115 today. Lisbon has better known Moreton Bay figs, at Príncipe Real and in the Estrela garden, both of them on their own city-centre stages with a crowd in front of them. This one has a neighbourhood square, a bench underneath and no queue.