The Magnolia of the Cathedral

The best evidence for this tree's age is photographs it does not appear in. Shots taken from the Teatro Coliseo in 1931 and from the corner of the cathedral in 1934 show the spot empty, which puts the planting in the early 1940s and makes this magnolia much younger than the Gothic wall it stands against, begun in 1401. By 1965 it was well grown. Then the city nearly killed it by tidying up. The pedestrianisation of the Avenida de la Constitución in 2007 and the tram works that followed shrank its planting bed and laid slabs over the roots that were still doing the work, and it was one of only three notable trees on the avenue to come through those works at all. It declined so visibly that both the parks service and ordinary passers-by were alarmed. In June 2021 the city spent 18,500 euros lifting the paving again, widening the bed, draining it, treating soil that had gone too limey, and putting in irrigation and a low pomegranate hedge to keep feet off the roots. Seville's own inventory now rates it stressed but recovering. The assessment is blunt about the cause: this was not weather or disease, it was the pavement.