The Lledoner de Lluc

Photographs from a century ago already show this hackberry at roughly the size it is today, which is why the Balearic register will only put its age somewhere between 150 and 350 years. It stands in front of the monastery of Lluc, Mallorca's most visited pilgrimage site, and the square is named after it: Plaça del Lledoner, lledoner being the Catalan name for the tree. The sanctuary's religious and civic festivals are held here, in its shade. The numbers are generous. About 16 metres tall, a trunk around four metres round, and a crown some 22 metres across, which makes it wider than it is high. When the register catalogued it in 2005 it rated its vitality as high and noted that it fruits well, so this is not a veteran hanging on but a tree in full working order. Every pilgrim who has reached Lluc in the last hundred years has crossed its ground. From the square a paved path climbs to the spot where, by tradition, the figure of the Mare de Déu de Lluc was found, the story the whole sanctuary grew from. The tree makes no claim to be that old, and nobody should make it on its behalf. It simply stands where everyone arrives. Lluc is high in the Serra de Tramuntana, about 50 minutes by car from Palma, and two old holm oaks on this page stand within a few kilometres along the same mountain road.