A date palm is meant to be one trunk and a crown.
Date Palm
Phoenix dactylifera
A date palm belongs to an oasis, not a city square, yet a handful have made themselves at home in European parks and gardens. We map 5 of them, in 5 cities.
Lisbon's, in the Ninth of April Garden, is the most argued over: the city calls it the tallest tree in the capital at 38 metres, the national register measured it at 26.7, and nobody has climbed up to settle it. Palermo's stands over a Roman mosaic of Alexander the Great hunting a lion, unearthed by accident under Villa Bonanno and left where it was found. A date palm is meant to grow as a single trunk, and two of these refuse. Seville's forks into a cluster in the Parque de Maria Luisa. Valencia's La Carcasa, in the university's botanic garden, grows more than 35 trunks from one base and is named for the spent casing of a firework shell.
Seville
Lisbon
Lisbon's city hall calls this the tallest tree in the city and puts it at 38 metres, four metres over the triumphal arch at the bottom of the Baixa.
Valencia
A date palm is supposed to grow one trunk.
Palermo
Underneath this palm garden's soil sits a Roman house with a mosaic of Alexander the Great hunting a lion, uncovered by accident in the 19th century and left exactly where it was found.
Photo: Diego Gelvis (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Matera
Borgo La Martella was built to be a beginning.
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