Ancient trees in Spain

Spain's great native trees are out in the countryside, in the dehesas where holm oaks stand a hundred paces apart over grazing pigs. This page maps 72 remarkable trees across 8 cities in Spain, each one verified and placed. The oldest of them is The Ombú of La Cartuja in Seville, at 500 years.

What grows in its cities came back on ships. The ombu in Seville is from the Argentine pampas, the dragon trees are Canarian, the Moreton Bay figs are Australian and the ahuehuetes are Mexican, and they are here because Seville and Cadiz held the monopoly on trade with the Americas and captains brought seedlings home the way other people bring back souvenirs. The result is that a Spanish city garden is a record of where its ships went. It also explains the ages: most of these trees arrived with the botanical fashion of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, so two hundred years is old here and five hundred is exceptional.

Every mapped city in Spain

Barcelona10 trees · oldest about 250 years 2

Granada10 trees · oldest approximately 440 years 3

Madrid10 trees · oldest about 300 years 4

Malaga10 trees · oldest approximately 400 years 5

Seville10 trees · oldest 500 years 6

Valencia10 trees · oldest approximately 400 years 7

Cordoba7 trees · oldest said by the palace to be over 400 years 8

Cadiz5 trees · oldest approximately 123 years

The oldest tree mapped in Spain

The Ombú of La Cartuja 500 years

Isla de la Cartuja, Seville. This ombú, a soft-wooded relative of spinach that grows to the size of an oak, is said to have come from seeds Hernando Colón, son of Christopher Columbus, brought back from South America and planted in his own private arboretum around 1529.

Trees from Spain also appear in Europe's Ancient Oaks You Can Actually Visit · Europe's Best Tree City Trips · Europe's Most Remarkable Yews. See every city on the map, or open the map to find what is near you.