Ahuehuete de Tacuba
not documentedMontezuma Cypress
The famous tree of Tacuba is a ruin, and this is the one still growing. A few streets from here, in Popotla, stands what remains of the Arbol de la Noche Triste, the ahuehuete under which Hernan Cortes is said to have wept during his retreat from Tenochtitlan in 1520. The city's own venue page for the site describes the remains as exactly that, remains. There is nothing left to walk to. Meanwhile, on a pavement corner where Marina Nacional meets Golfo de Bengala, a living ahuehuete has quietly reached a circumference of just over 10 metres. Ten metres of trunk on a street corner, with a crown 18 metres wide and 22 metres of height above it, and until June 2025 it carried no protection of any kind. It was declared an Arbol Patrimonial that month, in the same decree as the ahuehuete in Parque Espana. Nobody has dated it. The city's file records the trunk, the crown and the height and leaves the age column blank, and a girth alone is not an age without a growth rate for this species in this soil. If you know of a source that puts a number on it, we would like to see it. What can be said without hedging is that in a district known for a dead tree, this is the large old one that survived.
The button above opens directions in your maps app. In the historic Tacuba neighbourhood (site of the Noche Triste/Noche Victoriosa retreat route); roughly 900 m-1 km from Metro Tacuba (Linea 2 and 7 interchange).
- Species
- Montezuma Cypress (Taxodium mucronatum)
- Age estimate
- not documented
- Location
- Avenida Marina Nacional 368, corner with Golfo de Bengala, Colonia Tacuba, Miguel Hidalgo, CP 11410 (Tacuba, Miguel Hidalgo)
- Access
- Free, standing on the public sidewalk (banqueta) at the street corner, visible and reachable at any time.
- Getting there
- In the historic Tacuba neighbourhood (site of the Noche Triste/Noche Victoriosa retreat route); roughly 900 m-1 km from Metro Tacuba (Linea 2 and 7 interchange).
Trees nearby
Ticking this one off, walks past several more, and your collection growing city by city: that is the Ancient Trees app.
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