The Ficus of the Pila del Pato

A residents' association liked this tree enough to put it on their letterhead. The Indian laurel fig on the Plaza de San Leandro, known by the duck fountain it stands beside, was probably planted around 1945, going by photographs from the period. It survived the plaza's 1966 rebuild, when the bare earth square was paved over with cobbles and river stone, and the paving nearly finished it: the roots stopped getting air, branches died back from the tips, and the tree went into visible decline. The parks service drilled a ring of shafts around the root crown to let oxygen and nutrients back down, and it recovered fast. A bench built too close was later removed for the same reason. In 2019 the Asociación de Vecinos Casco Antiguo, working with the city, widened the planting pit and put new planting around it, and the association took the tree as its logo. It now measures 4.77 metres round with a crown 21 metres wide, and it has quietly reduced its own canopy over the years in response to the root damage, a tree editing itself down to what it can support. The city was still working on its soil in October 2025.