Four trees in Parque Bensaúde carry a national protection order, and the one the neighbourhood is proudest of is not among them.
Holm Oak
The holm oak is the oak most northern visitors fail to recognise: evergreen, with small dark leathery leaves closer to an olive's than to the lobed oak leaf on every pub sign, holly-like enough that holm is simply the old English word for holly. This page maps every holm oak on the site, 35 so far across 27 cities.
Around the Mediterranean it is the landscape itself, the dark domed canopy of Spanish dehesas where pigs fatten on its acorns for jamon iberico, and it shrugs off drought, salt wind and poor soil that would kill its deciduous cousins. Planted north of its range it grows slowly into dense, near-black domes that read as older than they are. The holm oaks mapped so far are listed oldest first.
Lisbon
Two holm oaks in Parque Bensaúde were classified on the same day and recorded at the same age.
Barcelona
Barcelona's oldest tree nearly lost to a housing development.
This oak is the only part of a rich man's garden that was never sold, demolished or built over.
Rome
Photo: Albarubescens (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Marcantonio IV Borghese tore out six hundred holm oaks in 1784 to build an English-style garden around Villa Borghese's lake, and one tree, by luck or design, was left standing.
The children who climbed this holm oak gave it its name.
Florence
This holm oak has spent its whole life fighting for balance, and it shows.
Valencia
This oak is the last physical trace of an orchard that vanished under the city growing around it.
Malaga
Almost everything remarkable in Malaga's tree canon arrived from somewhere else: Australia, South America, India, the Himalayas.
London
Photo: Hopefully Acceptable Username (CC BY-SA 4.0)
This oak survived five centuries partly because people kept attacking it.
The October 1987 storm brought down some 15 million trees across southern England and left this one untouched.
Dublin
Most of St Anne's Park's holm oaks do exactly what Lord Ardilaun planted them to do: stand in a straight, uniform line and block the wind coming off Dublin Bay.
Photo: William Murphy (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Lord Ardilaun planted a windbreak in the 1870s that is still doing its job a century and a half later.
Cork
This is the oldest tree the national heritage survey found at Fota, banded to 200 to 300 years, which would put its planting close to when the arboretum's grounds were still ordinary farmland, deca...
Geneva
This oak is nearly twice as wide as it is tall.
Athens
Photo: macrolepis (CC BY 3.0)
The largest holm oak in the National Garden of Athens is old enough to have been planted by Queen Amalia's own gardeners, and big enough that it is rarely matched by wild specimens anywhere else in...
Melbourne
Edinburgh Gardens has two holm oaks, and the National Trust of Australia has a view about which one to look at.
Darling Gardens has two trees on the National Trust's register.
Madrid
Roads converge on this tree rather than around it.
Cordoba
Twelve courtyards, eighteen noble families, five centuries of owners, and the oldest inhabitant of the house is a tree.
Bari
Photo: Mara Cavalluzzi (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Quasano calls its holm oak the Lie Tree.
Hobart
Hobart has been raising this oak's replacements from its own acorns since 2020, which tells you how the original is doing.
Sorrento
Three metres and eighteen centimetres round, and it stops at eleven metres tall.
Genoa
This is the thickest registered oak in Genoa's old town and the least documented tree on this list.
The civic group that runs computer lessons in this corner of Genoa named itself after a tree: Il Leccio di via Mogadiscio, the holm oak of Via Mogadiscio.
Naples
Four 16th century Neapolitan noblewomen, sisters who took religious vows together, founded the convent whose cloister now holds this holm oak, one of two trees the site is best known for alongside...
Lucca
Photo: Graeme Maclean (CC BY 2.0)
Seven oaks grow forty-four metres above the street, in a brick box of earth on the roof of a medieval tower, and they are the emblem of the city.
Zaragoza
This is the tree the neighbourhood meets at.
Assisi
This was the first tree Italy ever entered on its national register of monumental trees.
The famous holm oak at the Eremo delle Carceri is the small one.
Mendaza
Photo: Javier Hermoso De Mendoza (CC BY-SA 2.0 es)
This oak's trunk is not a trunk.
Menorca
The oldest tree on Menorca is ten metres tall and stands beside a beach car park.
Modena
Photo: EliFrelly (CC BY-SA 4.0)
The courtyard is named after the tree.
Muxika
Photo: Aintzanemug (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Holm oak belongs to dry, inland Spain, to Aragon and Andalusia and the country's hot interior.
Perugia
On 20 June 1859 papal Swiss Guards and the Antibes Legion came up the hill and sacked Perugia, and these oaks were already old.
Explore by city: Brussels · Lisbon · Pamplona · Barcelona · Milan · Amsterdam · Oahu · Rome · Florence · Arnhem · Singapore · Palermo · Seville · Berlin · Tokyo · Brisbane · Valencia · Los Angeles · Prague · Alicante · Vienna · Paris · Malaga · London · New York · Philadelphia · Dublin · Krakow · Copenhagen · Boston · Vilnius · Utrecht · Porto · Haarlem · The Hague · Houston · Cork · Munich · Nijmegen · Kyoto · Bath · Geneva · Venice · Helmond · Sintra · Reykjavik · New Orleans · Granada · Fukuoka · Palma de Mallorca · Leiden · Leeuwarden · Cagliari · Cadiz · Edinburgh · San Francisco · Athens · Melbourne · Seattle · Dordrecht · Nice · Madrid · Chicago · Tilburg · Coimbra · Oslo · Osaka · Parma · Enschede · Eindhoven · Glasgow · Caserta · Budapest · Cordoba · Tallinn · Groningen · Warsaw · Istanbul · Cambridge · Bari · Seoul · Washington DC · Sydney · Segovia · Hobart · Leipzig · Potsdam · Amersfoort · Helsinki · Salzburg · Zurich · Bangkok · Padua · Sorrento · Zwolle · Ljubljana · Lyon · Hong Kong · Bristol · Verona · Turin · Girona · Beijing · Vancouver · Montreal · Sapporo · Apeldoorn · Genoa · Bologna · Alkmaar · Stockholm · Den Bosch · Maastricht · Naples · Split · Dresden · Taipei · Belgrade · Deventer · Quebec City · Catania · Dubrovnik · Toronto · Delft · Kamakura · Rio de Janeiro · Kanazawa · Guimaraes · Oxford · Braga · Mexico City · Breda · Rotterdam · Ferrara · Nagoya · Hiroshima · Lucca · Thessaloniki · Trieste · Venlo · York · Naha · Brno · Buenos Aires · Salamanca · Bucharest · Zaragoza · Gdansk · Ronda · Auckland · Kansas City · Setubal · Bilbao · Wroclaw · Sao Paulo · Tarragona · Assisi · Poznan · Sofia · Lima · Cesky Krumlov · Bamberg · Antwerp · Aachen · Allouville-Bellefosse · Athens, Georgia · Baarn · Bad Blumau · Bansko · Borculo · Brunswick, Georgia · Bucaco · Chadds Ford · Chapel Hill, North Carolina · Columbia, Missouri · Concoret · Coos Bay · Coppenbrügge · Craigends · Cremines · Curinga · Ede · Emmen · Erdmannrode · Fara in Sabina · Fish Lake, Utah · Fortingall · Fribourg · Fulufjället · Galenbeck · Giethoorn · Granit · Groton · Guerneville · Gutau · Hampton, Virginia · Harderwijk · Heinkenszand · Jægerspris Nordskov · Kagoshima · Lebec · Logan, Ohio · Martinsville, New Jersey · Miriam Vale · Miyazaki · Nara · Oklahoma City · Olympic National Park · Oostkapelle · Palo Alto · Pirangi · Ramsau am Dachstein · Santa María del Tule · Schlagsdorf · Sequoia National Park · Simsbury · Sliven · Stelmužė · Stratfield Saye · Sunderland, Massachusetts · Tillamook · Timber Creek · Vassununga · Villeneuve · Waipoua Forest · Zarzecze · Zehdenick · Aarhus · Aberford · Aga · Aguas de Moura · Aizuwakamatsu · Albersdorf · Alishan · Altrier · Amerongen · Amt Neuhaus · Aosta · Argoules · Arita · Asago · Assen · Atami · Aubers · Austin · Bad Staffelstein · Baldenhain · Baltimore · Bargischow · Belfast · Berga/Elster · Bergamo · Biei · Bilu · Bioul · Boetersheim · Bohunovice · Boise · Bojnice · Bonnerue · Bordeaux · Borrowdale · Bošáca · Bracon · Bratislava · Braziūkai · Breukelen · Brielow · Brighton · Bruges · Brzoza · Busan · Cabeza del Buey · Canberra · Cardiff · Časta · Cerro Veronese · Charleston · Chatenay-Malabry · Chiapa de Corzo · Chishang · Cielętniki · Cinovec · Collm · Cologne · Como · Cooper Creek · Crete · Cyprus · Dallas · Dębina · Degsne · Den Hout · Dengfeng · Derby · Doornenburg · Drnava · Dubinné · Effeltrich · Eichigt · Eisolzried · Ekerö · Estry · Feternes · Fleringen · Flinders Ranges · Fonte Colombo · Formentera · Fort Lauderdale · Fort Worth · Frankenthal · Frankfurt · Freiburg · Frydlant · Fujikawaguchiko · Ghent · Ghisonaccia · Giessen · Gjerrild · Glastonbury · Gliniak · Gojaus Miskas · Gonzales, Texas · Gornja Stubica · Gothenburg · Gottingen · Graz · Grybiskes · Gumeli · Haarlemmermeer · Hainich National Park · Hallstatt · Hamburg · Hawaii · Heede · Heerlen · Heidelberg · Henryków Lubański · Herchies · Higashiagatsuma · Higashimiyoshi · Higashine · Higashiomi · Hilo · Hilvarenbeek · Hilversum · Himi · Himmelsberg · Hino · Hinode · Hniszów · Hokuto · Hoorn · Horaiji · Horn-Lehe · Horni Bradlo · Hronsek · Ibiza · Ichinohe · Iga · Iheya · Iida · Indianapolis · Ito · Itoshiro · Iwaki · Iwata · Jachymov · Jalhay · Jauze · Jihlava · Kaga · Kanagi · Kasukabe · Kauai · Kaunas · Kawago · Kawatana · Kawazu · Kimotsuki · Kintai · Kitakata · Kitamoto · Königslutter am Elm · Komjatice · Kopčany · Koriyama · Kotel · Kozaki · Kremnica · Książ · Kybarciai · Laren, Gelderland · Las Vegas · Lausanne · Lazy · Le Precheur · Lecina · Les Clayes-sous-Bois · Leuven · Liernu · Limmersdorf · Linderhof · Lipany · Liškiava · Liverpool · Llangernyw · Łódź · Lohja · Luë · Lukavice · Luxembourg City · Machov · Macon · Macugnaga · Madeira · Maebashi · Magescq · Maibara · Malsfeld · Manchester · Matera · Matsumae · Maui · Mcely · Mendaza · Menorca · Miedzyzdroje · Miharu · Minami-Alps · Minamiaso · Minneapolis · Mito · Modena · Moffat · Monterey · Morioka · Motosu · Mrákotín · Msecke Zehrovice · Muxika · Myjava · Nagai · Nagano · Nagi · Nago · Nantes · Neba · Nedvedice · Neudrossenfeld · Neuenrade · Newtown · Nichinan, Tottori · Nicorps · Niedenstein · Nihonmatsu · Nikaho · Nishio · Novi Ligure · Nuenen · Numata · Nuremberg · Nyingchi · Odawara · Ofunato · Oguni · Okuizumo · Omishima · Ono · Ora · Oss · Otama · Otoyo · Ottawa · Ottendorf · Oyodo · Pagramantis Regional Park · Pajūris · Passo Manghen · Peesten · Pelham · Pemberton · Pérouges · Perth · Perugia · Perušić · Pesselieres · Pisa · Pisz Forest · Pittsburgh · Plauginiai Forest · Plunge · Polchow · Poleski National Park · Port Renfrew · Portalegre · Portland · Préty · Priekulė · Princeton, New Jersey · Prosec pod Jestedem · Przybudki · Radomsko · Rambynas · Ramsau bei Berchtesgaden · Rannée · Raudonė · Reaumont · Regensburg · Reinborn · Renavas · Reyersviller · Rhenen · Riga · Rimov · Robenhausen · Rogalin · Roosendaal · Rothenburg ob der Tauber · Rouen · Rudy · Rumskulla · Runnymede · 's-Gravenvoeren · Sachsenbrunn · Sakegawa · Sambeek · Samoëns · San Antonio · San Diego · San Quirico d'Orcia · Sant'Alfio · Sardinia · Savannah · Scheessel · Schenklengsfeld · Schlettau · Senica · Shimizu · Shingu · Shinkamigoto · Shiwa · Shokawa · Sittard-Geleen · Solingen · Spokane · Sremski Karlovci · Starý Smokovec · Stokaičiai · Stoutenburg · Strasbourg · Stuttgart · Sulechów · Suzuka · Taasinge · Takahagi · Takahama · Takayama · Takeo · Tamba · Tatobity · Teleci · Telgte · Tenerife · Toba · Toga · Tolpuddle · Tombeboeuf · Toul · Toulouse · Trainiškis · Trenčianske Stankovce · Trento · Tricase · Trollskogen · Tsuruoka · Tulsa · Turku · Uda · Ueda · Ueki · Unnan · Untermerzbach · Uzovská Panica · Vainiai · Veľké Borové · Velke Opatovice · Velp · Venon · Vír · Viroflay · Višňová · Volkenroda · Vorden · Vytogala · Waremme · Wessobrunn · Westerlo · Wilparting · Wiśniowa · Wolfheze · Wuppertal · Wye Mills, Maryland · Xhoris · Yabu · Yakushima · Yamanashi City · Yangpyeong · Yangshuo · Yoshida · Ypres · Yvignac-la-Tour · Zaanstad · Žalgiriai · Žilina · Zwieslerwaldhaus · Żywiec · or browse all species.