The Pecan of the Real Alcázar

The tallest tree in the Alcázar gardens is a nut tree from the Mississippi valley, and almost nobody looks up at it. The pecan stands 37 metres in the Jardín del Marqués de la Vega Inclán, the garden José Gómez Millán laid out between 1913 and 1917 over what had been the Huerta del Retiro, the palace's working orchard. It was planted with the garden, alongside the other fruit trees Gómez Millán scattered through his design, so it is roughly as old as the layout around it. An older pecan grew near the Pabellón de Carlos V and was taken down when it became decrepit, which leaves this one carrying the species almost alone in the city. It is in unusually good order. Of the fifty-six individual trees in Seville's singular-tree inventory, this is one of a handful rated optimal on all three counts the city measures: physiological state, phytosanitary state and biomechanical structure. The inventory credits careful pruning across its whole life, and a planted border that keeps visitors off the ground under its canopy. Its trunk is 2.8 metres round, its crown 24 metres across, and it fruits into autumn, though the nuts are not yours to gather.