The Blue Gum North of the Estanque

In February 2015 the Comunidad de Madrid revised its register of singular trees and published two lists side by side. One added 69 trees. The other struck 43 off, for the blunt reason that they were dead or gone, and among them was the Eucalipto del Parque del Retiro. On the same page, a different eucalyptus a few hundred metres away was written into the catalogue in its place, listed for historical significance. This is the replacement. It stands north of the Estanque Grande, near the Paseo de Coches, over 20 metres tall with a crown about as wide and a trunk you cannot get your arms halfway round. Eucalyptus globulus is Tasmanian, brought to Spain in the 1860s on the theory that it drained marshes and drove off malaria, and planted so enthusiastically across the north-west that it has become a management problem there. In a Madrid park it is simply a giant, its bark peeling away in long ribbons and its leaves smelling of a cough sweet when you crush one. The trunk carries a century of carved initials, which is why the tree writers who have followed it since the 2000s keep asking the park for a sign and a low rail.