The Harp Eucalyptus of the Guadalquivir

Two organisms are working on Seville's big river gums at once, and this one on the Guadalquivir bank carries both. Glycaspis brimblecombei is a sap-sucking psyllid that followed eucalyptus out of Australia and reached Europe in the early 2000s. Laetiporus sulphureus is the sulphur polypore, the bracket fungus sold elsewhere as chicken of the woods, which feeds on heartwood. The same pair is recorded on El Gran Capitán in the Jardines de Murillo and on the river red gum of Calle Pedro Salinas, so this is pest pressure on a species across the city rather than one unlucky tree. Neither has finished it. The city's 2022 survey rates its physiology and plant health clean and its structure compromised, and puts it at 18 metres tall. The trunk measures three metres around, but read that figure carefully: the surveyors took it three metres up rather than at the standard chest height, so it does not compare like for like with the other girths in the catalogue. It stands out in Tablada, on the west bank south of the centre, on the Anillo Verde path that runs along the river. This is a bike ride or a long walk rather than a stroll from the cathedral, and the reward is a very large tree on open riverside ground with a gate nowhere in it. No age is recorded anywhere. If you know it, tell us.