The Quejigo of Garinoain

Go south from Pamplona instead of north and the oaks change again. The quejigo, Quercus faginea, is the Iberian oak of the middle ground between the wet north and the dry Ebro plain: it holds its dead leaves through winter and drops them only when the new ones push, so a quejigo in February is a brown tree in a bare landscape, which is how you find one. This is the declared Natural Monument of the Valdorba, a district of small villages and Romanesque churches in the hills south of Pamplona that almost nobody visits, and Navarra listed it in 2009. Like every tree on this page it comes with a species, a place, a year and a coordinate and no measurements whatsoever. The Valdorba is worth the drive on its own account, and going out to look at a protected oak is as good a reason as any to end up in it. If you know its girth, or anyone has dated it, tell us and we will put the number on this page.