Portalegre's Jardim do Rossio holds a single plane tree that has outgrown the ground it stands on. Planted in 1838 by the town's own physician and botanist, its canopy has spread so wide that twenty steel props now hold up branches the trunk can no longer carry alone. Portugal's first tree ever classified a Monument of Public Interest, in 1938, it went on to win the national Tree of the Year contest in 2020 and place fourth in the European final the following spring.
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Photo: João Martins (CC BY-SA 4.0)
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The Plane Tree of Rossio
London Plane (Platanus x acerifolia) · ~188 years, planted 1838 · Sé e São Lourenço, town centre
A single tree from 1838 now needs twenty steel props just to hold itself together. Portalegre's own physician and botanist, José Maria Grande, planted this plane in what is now the Jardim do Rossio, and its lowest branches have since spread so far sideways that the town installed a ring of posts to carry weight the trunk alone can no longer manage, turning the canopy into something closer to a pergola than an ordinary crown.
The growth is documented rather than guessed at. An 1894 survey measured the trunk at 3 metres round and the canopy at 24 metres across; more recent measurements put the same tree at roughly 7 metres round and a canopy spanning about 37 metres, among the widest of any plane tree recorded on the Iberian Peninsula. In 1938 it became the first tree in Portugal ever classified a Monument of Public Interest, decades before the country had any general law protecting old trees at all.
It has kept collecting titles since. Portalegre's plane won the national Árvore Portuguesa do Ano contest for the year 2021, then placed fourth in the European Tree of the Year the following spring. It still shades the same square Grande planted it in, free to sit under any day of the year.
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