The Pohutukawa of Campo Santana

Curtains of reddish roots hang from the limbs of this tree, thin as string where they start and matted into thick ropes where they gather, above the tables and the playground of the Jardim Braamcamp Freire on Campo Santana. It is a Pohutukawa, Metrosideros excelsa, a coastal tree of New Zealand's North Island, where it grows on sea cliffs and is known as the New Zealand Christmas tree for the crimson flowers it carries in December. Here the roots have no rock to hold and simply keep growing down. Portugal classified it in 2018 as part of a group of public interest that also takes in four bela-sombra trees, and the national register gives that group an age of 123 years at its 2016 survey, so these trees are around 130 years old now. The register counts two Pohutukawas in the garden. A reader photographed this one in October 2026, and a second reader told us what it was after we had first taken it for the weeping fig that stands about a hundred metres away on the same slope. Look for the leaning, many-stemmed trunk at the edge of the play area and stand under the roots.