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.
Date Palm
A date palm belongs to an oasis, not a city square, yet three of them have made themselves at home in European parks and gardens. This page maps every date palm on the site, 3 so far across 3 cities.
Lisbon's, in the Ninth of April Garden, is the most disputed: 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 exactly where it was found. Seville's broke its own species' rule entirely: a date palm is meant to grow as a single trunk, and the one in Parque de Maria Luisa forks into a cluster, which is the only reason the city's own survey of singular trees noticed it at all. Three palms, three very different reasons to have made the list.
Lisbon
Palermo
Photo: Diego Gelvis (CC BY-SA 4.0)
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.
Seville
A date palm is meant to be one trunk and a crown.
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