Vizcaya's Surviving Cuban Royal Palm

James Deering bought more than a hundred royal palms in Cuba for his Miami estate. Vizcaya says one is left. Vizcaya publishes a photograph of a palm delivery dated 28 November 1921, and the shipments ran from about 1916 to that year, so the survivor has been standing here for roughly a century. That figure is worked out from the planting, not measured on the palm, and Vizcaya gives no year for this particular trunk. It is also big. Vizcaya calls it a Florida Challenger, "the 4th largest Royal Palm", and the Florida Forest Service register agrees on the title: measured in April 2012, it stood 22.6 metres tall, with a trunk 152 centimetres round and a crown about 7.6 by 6.4 metres. One honest gap. Vizcaya does not say where on the grounds its survivor stands, so we cannot prove the register's palm is the same one. It is the only royal palm the register records at Vizcaya, which makes it very likely, and our pin is the register's coordinate rather than a fix at the trunk. The rest of the Cuban shipment is gone. Vizcaya's recent pages still say this one remains, though we have not seen a dated photograph of it. Entry to Vizcaya is paid, and Vizcaya Metrorail station is about 500 metres from the entrance.