These are Mallorca's old trees outside the capital; Palma's five, including the olive of five or six centuries in front of the town hall, have their own page, Palma de Mallorca. Three of the six stand within a few kilometres of each other in the Serra de Tramuntana around the monastery of Lluc: the hackberry that gave the sanctuary's square its name, and two holm oaks put at around five hundred years. The others are a stone pine the Deià road was widened around, a hackberry opposite Montuiri's cemetery, and an Aleppo pine outside a shopping centre in Marratxí.
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The Lledoner de Lluc
Mediterranean Hackberry (Celtis australis) · roughly 150 to 350 years · Santuari de Lluc, Serra de Tramuntana
Photographs from a century ago already show this hackberry at roughly the size it is today, which is why the Balearic register will only put its age somewhere between 150 and 350 years. It stands in front of the monastery of Lluc, Mallorca's most visited pilgrimage site, and the square is named after it: Plaça del Lledoner, lledoner being the Catalan name for the tree. The sanctuary's religious and civic festivals are held here, in its shade.
The numbers are generous. About 16 metres tall, a trunk around four metres round, and a crown some 22 metres across, which makes it wider than it is high. When the register catalogued it in 2005 it rated its vitality as high and noted that it fruits well, so this is not a veteran hanging on but a tree in full working order.
Every pilgrim who has reached Lluc in the last hundred years has crossed its ground. From the square a paved path climbs to the spot where, by tradition, the figure of the Mare de Déu de Lluc was found, the story the whole sanctuary grew from. The tree makes no claim to be that old, and nobody should make it on its behalf. It simply stands where everyone arrives.
Lluc is high in the Serra de Tramuntana, about 50 minutes by car from Palma, and two old holm oaks on this page stand within a few kilometres along the same mountain road.
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2
The Lledoner del Cementiri
Mediterranean Hackberry (Celtis australis) · over a century, exact age not documented · Montuiri
In Montuiri, anar al Lledoner, going to the Lledoner, is local shorthand for dying. The Lledoner is this hackberry, and it stands opposite the gate of the village cemetery, where local reporting says it has stood since at least the early 1900s.
It grew with nothing competing for its light, and it shows. The Balearic register, which catalogued it in 2005, describes an ideal form: 16 metres tall, a crown spreading 20 metres, all of it carried on five primary branches. The register gives the trunk as 5.6 metres in a field labelled diameter; on a tree of this height that is almost certainly the distance round rather than across, and it is recorded here as a girth.
It has not had an easy recent history. In 2011 Última Hora reported a serious disease in the tree, and in 2018 the same paper covered a special pruning carried out to treat it. The register's latest description has it in good health and good structure, so it appears to have come through. If you pass it and something looks wrong, we would like to know.
Nobody has published an age. Over a century is what the village can say with confidence, and the real figure may be well beyond that. If you know of a planting record or an old photograph, tell us.
Montuiri sits on the Palma to Manacor road about 25 kilometres east of the capital, and the bus between the two stops in the village.
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3
The Pi de Sa Pedrissa
Stone Pine (Pinus pinea) · roughly 100 to 200 years · Deia, Serra de Tramuntana
When the road between Valldemossa and Deià was widened, this pine was in the way, and it stayed. The Balearic register records that it was deliberately kept for its stature, which is about as warm as a road-building project gets.
It is a stone pine, 18 metres tall, with the flat umbrella canopy the species is known for beginning some 16 metres up. The trunk is 109 centimetres across, a little over three metres round, and when the register catalogued it in 1993 it described the tree as in excellent and very regular condition. Three younger stone pines stand close by, and the register takes them to be its own offspring.
The land belongs to the Consell de Mallorca, so this is a public tree beside a public road, and it has become a landmark on this stretch of coast: a local walking route down to Cala Deià carries its name. The register puts its age at roughly 100 to 200 years. That is young by the standards of this island's olives and oaks, and it earns its place by shape rather than years, a single umbrella held high over the Ma-10.
Parking beside it is awkward. It is better met on foot, on that walking route, or seen from the window of the Palma to Sóller bus, which runs this road through Valldemossa and Deià.
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4
The Alzina dels Set Cimals
Holm Oak (Quercus ilex) · roughly 500 to 600 years · Escorca, Serra de Tramuntana
Its name means the holm oak of seven tops, and it no longer has seven good ones. The single trunk divides into seven thick limbs, and in late 1999 bark beetles got into three of them. A heavy snowfall that followed snapped them.
What is left is still a tree worth stopping for. The Balearic register, which catalogued it in 1993, puts it at 500 to 600 years old, 16 metres tall with a crown 18 metres across, and gives the combined perimeter as nearly four metres. It stands beside the Ma-10 at the entrance to Son Massip, on the mountain road between the Gorg Blau reservoir and Lluc, next to a path walkers once used for exactly the shade it gave.
It is only fair to be plain about its condition. The register, which is our most recent source, describes real decline: one limb essentially dead and thin foliage across the crown. We found nothing newer, no survey and no report, to say whether it has since recovered or got worse. So go expecting a five-century veteran that has visibly lost limbs and is still standing, and if you have been recently, tell us how it looks.
The sanctuary of Lluc and its hackberry are a little over a kilometre away, and the Alzina d'en Pere, a holm oak of about the same age, stands on the public estate at Binifaldo a few kilometres beyond.
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5
The Alzina d'en Pere
Holm Oak (Quercus ilex) · roughly 500 years · Escorca, Serra de Tramuntana
This holm oak grew up alone, and its whole shape comes from that. With nothing crowding it, it built a crown the Balearic register calls well balanced, about 19 metres across on a tree 19 to 20 metres tall, over a trunk 118 centimetres thick at chest height, which is roughly 3.7 metres round.
The register puts it at about 500 years old, and the honest way to read that is somewhere between four and six centuries, because a figure like that is an estimate and not a count of rings. Holm oaks keep their leaves through the winter, so the dome you find in January is the same one you would find in July.
It stands on the Finca pública de Binifaldo, a 377-hectare public estate with signposted walking trails and a mountain refuge, near the Binifaldo houses and off the old road from Lluc to Pollença. The entrance is at kilometre 17.4 of the Ma-10. That makes it the easiest of the old trees around Lluc to turn into a proper walk rather than a roadside stop.
It belongs to a small cluster. The monastery of Lluc and its hackberry are about three kilometres away, and the seven-limbed Alzina dels Set Cimals a little further on the same road. A car, or the seasonal bus from Palma, is how most people will string the three together into one morning in the Serra de Tramuntana.
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6
The Pi des Caülls
Aleppo Pine (Pinus halepensis) · not documented · Marratxi
This Aleppo pine carries a lightning scar more than a hand wide along the base of its trunk, and that is not the strangest thing about it. The strangest is where it stands: in front of the main entrance of Festival Park, a retail and leisure complex in Marratxí, beside the underpass bridge.
It holds its own there. The Balearic register, which catalogued it in 2001, records a tree 15 metres tall with a trunk four metres round and a crown 30 metres across, twice as wide as the tree is high. At three metres up the trunk divides into four main limbs, and the lower branches sweep down almost to the ground.
Those proportions are the point. Aleppo pines are the common pine of Mallorca's hillsides and most people drive past thousands of them without a second look. This one made the island's official catalogue of singular trees, and the Catalan Wikipedia's list of Balearic singular trees repeats the same height and crown.
Nobody has published an age for it. The register leaves that field empty and so do we. If you know when it was planted, or have an old photograph of this spot from before the shops, tell us.
Marratxí's train station is a 15 to 20 minute walk away and several buses stop at Festival Park itself, which makes this the one tree on this page that needs no car at all.
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