The Emperor's Tree of Campo de Santana

This is the only catalogued centenary specimen of its species in Rio, and part of it is held up by steel cable. In April 2022 the forestry engineer Sydney Brasil climbed the tree, twelve metres and more, and fitted cabling to carry two limbs that had cracked over old cavities. He had first flagged the damage in 2019. Chrysophyllum imperiale is critically endangered in its own Atlantic Forest, and it is called the emperor's tree because two emperors were fond of it. Dom Pedro I and Dom Pedro II both liked the fruit, which looks like an abiu, pale yellow skinned with a sweet translucent pulp, and Dom Pedro II sent seedlings abroad. Catalogued specimens now stand in the botanical gardens of Sydney, Lisbon, Buenos Aires, Brussels and Florence. It grows in Campo de Santana, the largest green space in central Rio, which the French landscaper Auguste François Glaziou was commissioned to create in 1871. Dom Pedro II had brought him over in 1858 to run the imperial parks and gardens, and he went on to lay out the Passeio Público, the grounds of the Palácio do Catete and Quinta da Boa Vista. Glaziou planted this tree. No source gives the year, so its age is a band of 140 to 160 years rather than a number counted from the park's own founding. Eighteen years after that park opened, the Republic was proclaimed in it.