The Larch of Hólavallagarður

European larch does not grow wild anywhere near Iceland, and conifers in general struggle against the country's wind and thin soil more than almost any other kind of tree, which is part of why Iceland's forestry society singled one out in 2011 growing inside Hólavallagarður, Reykjavik's oldest surviving cemetery. Consecrated in 1838 and still the resting place of many of the country's most significant historical figures, the cemetery has become, almost by accident, one of the most heavily wooded plots of ground in the capital, its narrow gravel paths winding between headstones and trees rather than through open lawn the way most cemeteries are laid out. The larch was already about 80 years old when it won its designation, putting its planting around the early 1930s, decades into Iceland's first serious attempts at organized forestry after centuries in which the country had almost none. Larches lose their needles every winter, unusual for a conifer, so for several months a year this one stands bare among the cemetery's evergreens, a reminder that even the country's championed trees keep behaving like nothing else planted around them.