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 plant...
Photo: Anual (CC BY 3.0)
Ombu
Phytolacca dioica
The ombu is not wood at all. We map 12 of them, in 10 cities.
Phytolacca dioica is a giant herb that behaves like a tree, a soft stemmed relative of spinach whose swollen base is water storing tissue you could dent with a thumbnail, laid down for the dry seasons of the Argentine pampas it comes from. It grows fast and cannot be aged by counting rings, which is why the one in Cadiz is undated. What it does instead is get very wide. Two in a single Lisbon garden came out at 10.45 and 10.4 metres around, and the one at Largo do Limoeiro is wider than the house fronts on the street. Seville's is credited to seed that Christopher Columbus's son brought back around 1529. In Lima, the ombu at the Quinta de los Libertadores is said to have grown from seed José de San Martín carried up from Argentina in 1821.
Seville
Barcelona
This tree looks like it is made of muscle rather than wood, which is close to the truth.
Lisbon
The two fattest trunks in this garden are not really wood.
The roots of this one come out of the ground looking like more trunks.
The square is named after a lemon tree that is long gone.
Photo: kenward (CC BY 2.0)
Rome
Rome's most improbable street tree is originally from the Argentine pampas, and it owes its spot on the Capitoline Hill to a 50th birthday party.
Photo: Albarubescens (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Cagliari
The ombu is not built like a tree.
Naples
An ombu on a Posillipo street corner has one of the widest trunks of any tree in Naples, 6.27 metres round, and almost none of that girth is wood.
Bari
Saving one of Bari's four officially monumental trees has been costed at around a thousand euros, and the money has not been spent.
Cadiz
This tree cannot be aged the normal way, because it does not grow the annual rings that make dating a trunk possible.
Lima
Strictly speaking this is not a tree.
Madeira
The fattest thing in this garden is not a tree.
Explore by city: Seville · Barcelona · Lisbon · Rome · Cagliari · Naples · Bari · Cadiz · Lima · Madeira · every city · or browse all species.