At the right hour of the morning this tree throws a shadow shaped like a heart, which is how a fig on a beach north of Natal became the Árvore do Amor, the Tree of Love. Strictly, it is two trees. Both are gameleiras, the name Brazilians give to several native figs, and over the years their trunks and crowns have grown into one another until they read as a single tree with one obvious place to stand. The shadow does the rest, but only when the sun sits at the right angle in the middle of the morning. Come at noon and you get a large, ordinary patch of shade. Everyone locally will tell you it is more than 300 years old. Every news report repeats the figure and none of them says where it comes from, so treat it as the beach's own tradition rather than a measurement. In February 2024 somebody took a blade to it. Several of the exposed roots were cut through deliberately, and the case went to the police and to the state and federal environmental agencies. The tree survived. Officials said the cuts were unlikely to kill it, although open wounds can let disease in, so a report from anyone who has seen it lately is welcome. It stands on Barra de Maxaranguape beach, about 55 kilometres up the coast from Natal: a day out by car or bus, free, with no gate and no ticket. Nobody has published its girth.
Barra de Maxaranguape beach, Av. Cabo de São Roque, Maxaranguape, Rio Grande do Norte You can recognise it by two fig trunks grown together into one crown, whose shadow falls as a heart in mid-morning. It stands on Barra de Maxaranguape beach, where it is the best-known sight.
Free. A well-known public tourist spot on Barra de Maxaranguape beach; OpenStreetMap tags it tourism=yes by name. No gate or ticket found in any source.
Maxaranguape municipality, roughly 55km up the coast from Natal; a day trip by car or bus, not a walk or short hop from the city itself