What is the oldest tree in Sintra?
Sintra's oldest tree is the Fern Cork Oak (Sobreira dos Fetos) near Quinta do Relógio, classified as a tree of public interest in 1996 and estimated at more than 300 years old, Portugal's own forestry register puts it at 350. It stands at the roadside on the way to Seteais Palace, visible from the public street.
The tree earned its formal protection decades before its recent trouble: tour guides now walk visitors up to its trunk to strip bark as a souvenir, prompting a public plea from the environmental association GAAS that the state's own fencing does nothing to stop it. Sintra's other four listed trees are all younger imports, planted a century or two later inside the Romantic-era gardens the town is famous for: a New Zealand pohutukawa and a Norfolk Island pine at Monserrate, a walking cedar in the grounds of Pena Palace that has spent a century and a half visibly rooting its own branches into the lawn beside it, and a plane tree in the town's own public park, classified in 1951. None of the imports can match the cork oak's three and a half centuries, since Sintra's palace gardens are all 19th century creations layered onto a much older landscape. The cork oak and the plane tree are both free to see; Monserrate and Pena both charge standard park admission.
One of Sintra's trees also appears in Europe's Best Tree City Trips, a themed collection spanning several cities.