The Camellias of Largo da Igreja de Paranhos

Most people picture a camellia as a shrub in a pot. These two are six and a half metres tall with crowns ten metres across, and the state has had them under protection since 1992. They stand a few metres apart in the largo in front of the Igreja de São Veríssimo de Paranhos, a working parish church with an open square, so there are no gates and no hours. The trunks are modest, 1.15 and 1.25 metres round, because a camellia puts its growth into a dense mass of branches rather than one stem. From the far side of the largo the pair reads as a single green wall with a church behind it. Porto has traded on camellias since the 19th century, when the varieties came in through the port and the city's gardens filled with them. The register recorded these two at 200 years old when it measured in 2006, which puts them near 220 now. If that holds, they were growing here before the fashion arrived. Beyond the register itself they have gone unwritten about. No article, no local history, no photograph that names them. For a city that calls itself the city of camellias that is an odd gap, and it is worth saying plainly that the age and the species here rest on the state's record alone.