The Tulip Tree of Casa Tait

This American tulip tree became one of Portugal's first individually protected trees in 1950, a legal status most of the country's current laws postdate. It grows beside Casa Tait, a 19th-century mansion inside the Jardins do Palácio de Cristal that once belonged to a British port wine family, and at more than 250 years old it predates both the mansion and the palace gardens built around it by a century or more. Liriodendron tulipifera is native to the eastern United States, named for the yellow-green, cup-shaped flowers it produces each late spring, blooms that only appear once a tree reaches real maturity and can go unnoticed entirely on a younger specimen. A second tulip tree grows nearby in the same grounds, over 40 metres tall, though it lacks this one's formal protection status and shouldn't be confused with it. Porto's oldest tulip tree survived the transformation of its surrounding grounds more than once: the Palácio de Cristal itself, the glass-and-iron exhibition hall that gave the gardens their name, was demolished in 1951 and replaced by the domed sports arena still standing today, a change that came one year after this tree's own protection was made permanent. Whatever else has come and gone around it, the tulip tree has stayed exactly where it was planted.