The Texas Madrone of the Botanical Garden

A tree named for Texas and Mexico has found an unlikely second home in a university garden in northern Portugal. This Arbutus xalapensis, commonly called the Texas madrone across its native range in the Trans-Pecos region and northeastern Mexico, is currently under formal review for protection as a tree of public interest at the Jardim Botânico do Porto. The species is a close relative of the strawberry tree that grows wild across Portugal's own hillsides, sharing the same reddish, peeling bark and small urn-shaped flowers, which may be exactly why it settled into this collection more easily than most of the garden's other exotic imports. Specimens of this size are rare outside their native range, since the species is notoriously difficult to cultivate away from the dry, well-drained limestone soils it evolved for, and few botanical gardens outside Texas and northern Mexico maintain a documented example at all. The Jardim Botânico do Porto occupies the former Campo Alegre estate, absorbed by the University of Porto in the 20th century and now run as a teaching and research collection alongside its role as a free public garden. This madrone is one of the collection's quieter successes: no dramatic size record, no royal history, just a temperamental species that, against the odds, has been thriving in the wrong hemisphere for years.