The Grapefruit of the Cartuja Monastery

Grapefruit is a young fruit. The hybrid was first recorded in Barbados in the eighteenth century, which means no grapefruit tree anywhere can be truly ancient, however large it grows. This one grows large. It stands 14 metres with a crown of 13, and its trunk runs 2.20 metres around, measured at 0.85 metres rather than the usual chest height, widening to 2.50 at the base. For a citrus, that is close to absurd. It lives in the Huerta Grande, one of the two old orchards of the Cartuja monastery. Carthusian monks farmed this ground from the fifteenth century, and the orchards outlasted them, the English china factory that took the buildings over in the nineteenth century, and the Expo of 1992 that rebuilt the island around the walls. The monastery is now the Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo, and the visitor route through it finishes in those orchards, so the tree is on the standard path rather than behind a staff door. There is an entry fee of a few euros, waived all day on Saturdays and from seven in the evening Tuesday to Friday, and the site closes on Mondays. The city's 2022 survey rates the tree normal on physiology, plant health and structure, and gives it no age at all. Nobody appears to have recorded when it was planted. If a monastery or factory record says otherwise, tell us and we will add it.