The Camphor Tree of the Municipal Garden
Approximate location.
Crush a leaf and you will know whether you have found the right tree. Cinnamomum camphora carries camphor in its leaves and its wood, and the smell is the giveaway, which matters here more than it usually would: this garden holds two monumental trees and both sit on the same map point. The other is an ombu, a soft grey South American thing that is not really a tree in the botanical sense at all. This one is its opposite, an evergreen with a proper woody trunk that keeps its crown through the winter. Camphor is no more native to Madeira than the ombu is; Cinnamomum camphora comes from East Asia. It stands in a garden that mixes native and imported freely: Madeiran barbusano, til, pau-branco and dragon trees growing alongside kigelia, garcinia, plumeria and pandanus. Funchal's monumental list has it as code 312, canforeira, in the table the municipality took from a 2008 regional survey of the island's remarkable trees. Nothing is recorded against it: no age, no girth, no height. It grows in the Jardim Municipal, 8,300 square metres of public garden opened in 1885 on the ground of the old Convento de Sao Francisco, free and reported open at any hour, with Rua Conselheiro Jose Silvestre Ribeiro running down its western side. If you know when this one was planted, tell us.
The line is our estimate of how much there is to see, not a measurement. Typical for this species where this tree stands; exact weeks shift with the year.
Jardim Municipal do Funchal, Rua Conselheiro Jose Silvestre Ribeiro, Se, FunchalAn ordinary woody evergreen with a dense crown, and the crushed leaf smells of camphor. The garden's other monumental tree is an ombu, soft and grey and barely wood at all.
Free, public municipal garden, open every day (reported as open around the clock); this specific tree sits somewhere within an 8,300 sqm garden rather than at a marked spot.
Central Funchal, Rua Conselheiro Jose Silvestre Ribeiro side of the garden, a short walk from Avenida Arriaga and the seafront. No car needed.
Sources
Where the facts on this page come from.