The Box Elder of the Jardim do Bonfim

The ground this tree stands on was called the Campo da Barbuda in the sixteenth century, long before anyone thought to make a garden of it, and the box elder is now the oldest thing in what became Setubal's main park. It is a maple that does not look like one. Where every other maple carries a single lobed leaf, Acer negundo splits its into three, five or seven separate leaflets, so people routinely mistake it for an ash and it is sometimes called the ash-leaved maple for that reason. It is North American, it grows fast, it is short-lived by maple standards, and at nearly four metres round and a hundred and seventeen years old this one has outlasted what the species usually manages. That is the reason it is classified. It comes into leaf late and drops early, and in the weeks between it does what a park tree is for: it holds up a large amount of shade over the benches underneath.