The Multi-Stemmed Palm of the Conde de Colombi

A date palm is meant to be one trunk and a crown. This one is a cluster of them, and that is the entire reason the city put it in its 2022 survey of singular trees: it lists the palm as multi-stemmed, which is not how the species usually presents itself. The measurement sheet shows the consequence. There is no chest-height girth for this tree, because the standard measurement at 1.30 metres has nothing single to be taken around; the surveyors recorded 8.75 metres at the base instead, a figure that covers the whole bundle of stems rather than any one trunk. The palm reaches 15.8 metres, with a crown averaging 11.5 metres across. Physiology, plant health and structure are all rated normal, which for a tree of this shape is worth noting on its own. It stands on the Avenida del Conde de Colombi inside Parque de María Luisa, the park Seville laid out from the Montpensier estate and filled with exotics for the 1929 exhibition, and it shares that ground with nine other trees on this map. It is a ten minute walk from the Prado de San Sebastián interchange, past the Plaza de España, and it costs nothing to stand under. Nobody has put an age on it, and the survey does not try. If you know when it went in, tell us.