The Fern Cork Oak of Quinta do Relógio

Ferns grow straight out of this oak's bark, which is where its name comes from: Sobreira dos Fetos, the Fern Cork Oak. Portugal's forestry service classified it as a tree of public interest in 1996, by which point it had already stood beside the road to Seteais for roughly three centuries, older than the palace hotel that road now leads to. The English Romantic poet Robert Southey is said to have written that a painter should cross the Channel for no other reason than to see it, a claim that has outlived any record of when he supposedly made it. What has not faded is a more recent, less flattering kind of attention: tour guides have taken to walking groups up to the trunk to peel off pieces of bark as souvenirs, and the environmental association GAAS has publicly said the fencing the state put up around it does nothing to stop them. The tree stands on private land, but right at the roadside, visible and reachable from the public street rather than behind any gate, which is exactly why the damage keeps happening. It is Sintra's oldest documented tree, and the thing most likely to shorten that record is not age. It's whoever walks up next with a knife.