The tallest tree in the Alcázar gardens is a nut tree from the Mississippi valley, and almost nobody looks up at it.
Pecan
Carya illinoinensis
A pecan is an odd thing to find towering over a European garden, and yet two of the tallest trees mapped here are exactly that: 38 metres in Bordeaux's Jardin Public, the tallest tree in the garden, and the tallest in the Real Alcazar of Seville, both outgrowing everything planted around them. We map 12 of them, in 9 cities.
The species belongs to the river bottoms of Texas and the lower Mississippi, and Dallas keeps its native range on show: a pecan that stood at the Trinity River crossing before the first bridge went up in 1855, a grove on Cedar Creek in Moore Park that predates the park's founding in 1938, and a marker tree whose trunk runs along the ground for about 25 feet. Austin's Mother Pecan, in Zilker Park, is a tree people mostly know from lying underneath it.
Seville
Houston
In fruit
There is a footpath in Sugar Land called Old Pecan Tree Trail, and it is named after exactly what you would hope.
Valencia
The regional register calls this tree an American walnut, and that is close but not quite right.
Palermo
The vine wound around this trunk is a houseplant.
Tilburg
A pecan tree in Tilburg is already the story.
Austin
Austin's Tree of the Year for 2011 is a pecan that people mostly know from lying underneath it.
Bordeaux
The tallest tree in Bordeaux's Jardin Public is an American nut tree.
Dallas
This pecan was standing at the Trinity crossing before anyone built a bridge over it.
In fruit
Moore Park was created in 1938 as one of only five parks Dallas set aside for its Black residents, and renamed two years later, at a Juneteenth ceremony, for the civil rights leader Will Moore.
This pecan grew sideways on purpose, if the arborist who has studied it is right.
Fort Worth
By the city's own estimate this pecan is more than 200 years old, and Fort Worth's heritage register counts its visitors in layers.
Size is why this pecan made Fort Worth's heritage register.
Explore by city: Seville · Houston · Valencia · Palermo · Tilburg · Austin · Bordeaux · Dallas · every city · or browse all species.