The Stone Pine of Monte Gurugú

The city's 2022 survey rates this stone pine's condition as optimal across every measure it takes: physiology, structure and plant health all clean, no biological agent recorded. Its crown spreads 21.5 metres, among the widest of any tree in the catalogue, the flat, umbrella-shaped canopy the species is named for in Spanish, pino piñonero, the pine that gives pine nuts. It stands on the Monte Gurugú, an artificial hill inside Parque de María Luisa named, like several features of the park, after a real place, in this case a mountain near Melilla in Spanish North Africa, part of the layered, faintly exotic geography the park's nineteenth century designers built into its follies and mounds. Stone pine is native across the Mediterranean and has been cultivated for its edible seeds since Roman times, one of the oldest continuously harvested nut crops in Europe. The coordinate is the catalogue's own. Two more stone pines already published on this site, at the Jardines de Cristina and elsewhere in the city, share the species; this one is distinguished by its position on the Gurugú and its unusually wide crown.