Seville's 2022 survey rated this pine optimal across every measure it records, physiology, structure and plant health all clean, standing 26 metres tall on the campus of the university's engineerin...
Canary Pine
Pinus canariensis
Pinus canariensis is endemic to the Canary Islands and about as fire-adapted as a pine gets: a mature tree can resprout new needles directly from a trunk that fire has scorched black, a trick almost no other pine in the world manages, which is how specimens survive centuries on slopes that burn periodically. We map 3 of them, in 2 cities.
The two most extreme examples stand 150 metres apart above the town of Vilaflor de Chasna on Tenerife, on the same short marked trail off the TF-21. Pino Gordo is on the town's own coat of arms, 9.36 metres round at the trunk and the thickest native tree in Spain, estimated at 700 to 800 years old, already a substantial pine when Castile finished conquering the island in 1496. Pino de las Dos Pernadas, the taller and slimmer half of the pair at 56 metres, is the tallest native tree in Spain, its trunk splitting about ten metres up into two near-identical limbs, which is what its name literally describes. Both carry visible fire scars and both are free to reach on foot from the same car park. The third, in Seville, is a different kind of specimen entirely: an undated pine on the open grounds of the university's engineering campus, rated in optimal health by the city's 2022 survey of singular trees, standing 26 metres tall a very long way from the volcanic slopes the species calls home.
Seville
Tenerife
Vilaflor de Chasna put this tree on the town's coat of arms, which is a fair indication of how the place rates it against everything else it owns.
Photo: Cayambe (CC BY 4.0)
At 56 metres this is the tallest native tree in Spain, and it stands 150 metres from the thickest one.
Photo: Fry72 (CC BY-SA 4.0)
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