The Strawberry Tree of the Plaza de la Lealtad
Paseo del Prado
Approximate location.
Madrid's coat of arms shows a bear reaching up into a strawberry tree, and this is the closest thing the city has to the original. It stands in the southern corner of the Plaza de la Lealtad, opposite the Ritz, propped on iron crutches installed when its own limbs grew heavy enough to threaten pulling it over. Strawberry trees are usually shrubs, three or four metres of Mediterranean scrub. This one has been allowed to grow into an actual tree for more than a century, which is why the props are needed at all. It is also why the Comunidad de Madrid added it to the singular-tree catalogue in 2015 for cultural rather than botanical significance: the emblem, made real. Historians are fairly sure the heraldic tree of 1222 was never a madrono in the first place and that the bear on the crest was reaching for something else entirely, but the city has committed. The fruit is the payoff. Through November and December it carries white bell flowers and the previous year's fruit at the same time, red warty spheres that look like lychees and taste of very little. The Latin unedo means eat only one.
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Getting there
Plaza de la Lealtad, south side facing the Ritz, 28014 Madrid
You can recognise it by the iron crutches propping up its limbs. It stands in the southern corner of the Plaza de la Lealtad facing the Ritz, carrying white bell flowers and red warty fruit together in November.
Banco de Espana (Metro L2), 3 min walk
In bloomIn fruit
November and December, when it flowers and ripens last year's fruit at once
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.
Sources
Where the facts on this page come from. The story was written with AI from these sources, and readers who know the tree correct it.
