The Pohutukawa of the Jardim da Parada

Two of them stand ten metres apart at the edge of this garden and the register protects them as separate trees, which is fair enough: one measures 4.55 metres around the trunk, the other 4.9. From underneath they read as a single thing, a low tangle of grey limbs running almost horizontally out over the pavement with curtains of aerial root hanging off them, more like a tree that fell and carried on than one that stood up straight. Metrosideros excelsa comes from the coast of New Zealand's North Island, where it grips volcanic cliffs with exactly those roots. In Campo de Ourique it grips a kerb. Flowering lands in May and June here, half a year away from the December bloom that made it a Christmas tree at home, and it is not a subtle event: the crown fills with crimson stamens and almost no petal worth the name, and the pavement underneath goes red as they drop. Both trees were classified in September 2018, late for something this size, and both now sit inside the twenty metre no-work radius the metro company promised around the garden's classified trees.