Monchique oak at Alferce

Portugal's forest service has classified two Monchique oaks as Trees of Public Interest, and one of them grows on the edge of a national road. The species is rare enough to matter. In Portugal it grows wild only in the Serra de Monchique and the Mira basin, and it is listed there as critically endangered. Locally it goes by the town's own name, carvalho-de-monchique; botanists call it Quercus canariensis. This one stands at kilometre 32.82 of the EN 267, the road from Monchique east towards Alferce, about a kilometre out of the centre. It was classified in 1993. When the register measured it in 2006 it stood 25 metres tall, 3.1 metres round, with a crown 23 metres wide, almost as broad as it is high. The register's age is 150 years, the same round figure it gives the town's classified plane and araucaria, so treat it as an estimate somewhere between 120 and 180. Two things we could not settle. Nobody we found has recorded this trunk alive recently; a 2026 sighting near the register's point was not confirmed as this tree. And we did not establish a safe place to stop. It is a roadside view, and walking out from the village means walking the road itself, with no footpath. Our pin is the register's coordinate on the road line. If you have seen it standing, tell us.