Ancient trees in Portugal
Portugal has been putting individual trees on a legal register since 1938, and the habit shows. This page maps 27 remarkable trees across 3 cities in Portugal, each one verified and placed. The oldest of them is The Olive Trees of Santo Amaro in Lisbon, at 457 years.
A tree of public interest here comes with a file: species, girth, height, the year it was classified, and often the year it was last measured, all published by the forestry institute. That makes Portuguese ages more reliable than most, and it makes the disagreements visible when they happen. The trees themselves are a record of the voyages, as in Spain but more so: jacarandas from Brazil, dragon trees from Madeira, Moreton Bay figs whose aerial roots turn a Lisbon garden into something that looks borrowed from another continent. Lisbon holds more classified trees than any other municipality in the country, which is unusual for a capital and says something about what the city chose to keep.
Every mapped city in Portugal
Lisbon12 trees · oldest 457 years2
Porto10 trees · oldest 250+ years3
Sintra5 trees · oldest more than 300 years, Portugal's own register puts it at 350The oldest tree mapped in Portugal
The Olive Trees of Santo Amaro 457 years
Alcântara, Lisbon. Four olive trees outside a small round chapel in Alcântara have outlived every Portuguese king since before the Braganza dynasty existed.
Trees from Portugal also appear in Europe's Best Tree City Trips · The Oldest Tree in Every Country We Map. See every city on the map, or open the map to find what is near you.