The Lagunaria of the Jardines de la Madrina

In Australia this species is called the itchy bomb tree, because its seed capsules split to release fibrous hairs that irritate any skin that handles them. Look, do not collect. The Norfolk Island hibiscus is otherwise a generous tree, opening pale pink flowers of obvious hibiscus shape through the first half of summer, and this is a large one: 22 metres tall, a trunk 2.75 metres around at chest height widening to 4.33 at the base, and a crown averaging 10.3 metres. The city's 2022 survey rates it optimal on physiology and good on conservation, clean on every measure it takes. Where it stands takes a sentence of care. The Jardines de la Madrina are a small city-run garden beside the Casino de la Exposición, a surviving piece of the old San Telmo estate that the council recovered and reopened as public ground between 2013 and 2015. They are not the gardens of the Palacio de San Telmo next door, which houses the Andalusian presidency and can only be visited by appointment. This one you walk into, free, off the street. Its age is an open question and we are leaving it open. The city's catalogue treats it as a notable old specimen, while a Seville gardens association puts the city's oldest lagunarias at the Jardines de Cristina and the Real Alcázar instead. Nobody has published a date for this trunk. If someone has one, we would like it.