Cajueiro de Pirangi (The Cashew of Pirangi)

This looks like a small wood and it is one tree. A genetic quirk makes the branches of the Cajueiro de Pirangi grow sideways rather than upward, and where they touch the ground they root and carry on, so a single cashew has spread across something like 8,500 square metres. The published figures run from 7,300 to about 9,000, depending on who measured and in which year, because the tree keeps moving. Its perimeter is close to 500 metres. Botanists reckon the mass at around 70 ordinary cashew trees. A fisherman called Luis Inacio de Oliveira planted it in 1888. Local tradition adds that he died at 93 beneath its branches, which is the sort of detail that survives because people enjoy repeating it rather than because anyone wrote it down. Guinness World Records listed it in 1994 as the largest cashew tree on earth and it has held the title since, though a rival in Piaui state claims a wider spread on the strength of a 2016 state tourism survey that no adjudicator ever came to check. The tree's problem now is traffic. Its outer branches have reached the Rota do Sol highway beside the site, and keeping the two apart is a standing job for the people who look after it. Walkways run through the interior and a tower lets you see the whole crown, which from underneath is impossible.