This is the only Spanish tree in the collection, and it comes from 700 kilometres south.
Spanish Fir
Abies pinsapo
The Spanish fir survives wild in only three small patches of mountain behind Ronda and Grazalema, left behind when the ice age retreated and the climate around it dried out everywhere else in Europe. We map 4 of them, in 2 cities.
Botanists did not describe Abies pinsapo until the 1830s, and within decades it was already in gardens across the continent, which is how one now stands in the royal parterres of La Granja de San Ildefonso, 700 kilometres from the nearest wild tree. The Sierra de las Nieves trees mapped here show how strange the species gets at home: Las Escaleretas has its own natural monument decree, La Perra forks into a candelabrum instead of a single spire, and the Solitary Pinsapo stands completely alone on bare rock. Four so far, three wild and one transplanted.
Segovia
Ronda
This tree has a natural monument to itself.
Photo: Por los caminos de Málaga (CC BY 2.0)
It grows like a candelabrum, which a fir is not supposed to do.
It is the only tree in sight, which is the entire point of it.
Explore by city: Segovia · Ronda · Prague · Brussels · Seville · Munich · Porto · Brisbane · every city · or browse all species.