The Alzina dels Set Cimals

Its name means the holm oak of seven tops, and it no longer has seven good ones. The single trunk divides into seven thick limbs, and in late 1999 bark beetles got into three of them. A heavy snowfall that followed snapped them. What is left is still a tree worth stopping for. The Balearic register, which catalogued it in 1993, puts it at 500 to 600 years old, 16 metres tall with a crown 18 metres across, and gives the combined perimeter as nearly four metres. It stands beside the Ma-10 at the entrance to Son Massip, on the mountain road between the Gorg Blau reservoir and Lluc, next to a path walkers once used for exactly the shade it gave. It is only fair to be plain about its condition. The register, which is our most recent source, describes real decline: one limb essentially dead and thin foliage across the crown. We found nothing newer, no survey and no report, to say whether it has since recovered or got worse. So go expecting a five-century veteran that has visibly lost limbs and is still standing, and if you have been recently, tell us how it looks. The sanctuary of Lluc and its hackberry are a little over a kilometre away, and the Alzina d'en Pere, a holm oak of about the same age, stands on the public estate at Binifaldo a few kilometres beyond.