Queen María Cristina had a garden opened in her name on 24 July 1830, and a local gardens association names this pine, in bed 15, as a tree of that founding period.
Stone Pine
Pinus pinea
The stone pine is the tree that gives the Mediterranean skyline its flat topped silhouette, and it normally does that from a bare trunk ten or fifteen metres up, spreading wider than it grows tall. We map 19 of them, in 15 cities.
The one on Florence's Bobolino hillside ignores the rule and stands 31.5 metres. Two on a Setubal street are older than the street and are left over from the woodland it was cut through. Istanbul's Ata Fistik Cami, about 400 years old, gave a whole hill its name and was brought there from the Aegean rather than growing there naturally. On Mallorca the road between Valldemossa and Deià was widened around one rather than through it. Naples has the odd one out: the pine above Mergellina was arguably the most photographed tree on earth for a century, and the tree on that hillside now was planted in 1995 in place of the original.
Seville
The city's 2022 survey rates this stone pine's condition as optimal across every measure it takes: physiology, structure and plant health all clean, no biological agent recorded.
Barcelona
The tree came first.
A supercomputer lives in the chapel these pines grew up beside.
Sorrento
In 2014 the WWF called the pines of Villa Fondi the last of their kind left standing in the built-up area on the tufa slope of Piano di Sorrento, and objected to a plan to cut them back hard.
Guimaraes
This pine is as wide as it is tall and it stands in the middle of a roundabout.
Madrid
This stone pine grows half hidden among shrubs near a small hermitage called the Casa del Cura, the priest's house, in a park built for a duchess rather than a king.
Photo: Cenaida (CC BY 4.0)
Florence
Florence's Renaissance gardens get all the attention; this pine grows in a very different kind of park.
Stone pines are known for their width, not their height.
This stone pine did not move onto a street named after it.
Naples
The Pine of PosillipoYoung replacement
For roughly a century, one pine tree on a hillside above Mergellina was arguably the single most photographed tree on earth, framed against the Bay of Naples and Vesuvius in postcards, oil painting...
Girona
Thirty and a half metres is very tall for a stone pine, which usually spends its effort going sideways into the flat-topped umbrella everybody recognises.
Photo: Generalitat de Catalunya, Departament de Territori i Sostenibilitat (Attribution)
Istanbul
The tree that gave a hill its name is not originally from this hill.
Geneva
A Mediterranean umbrella pine has no obvious business on Lake Geneva, and this one is thriving.
Cordoba
Santa Maria de Trassierra is a village in the hills above Cordoba, and this stone pine is one of the specimens the city's own catalogue of singular trees reaches out beyond the city walls to include.
Setubal
These two were here before the street was.
Mallorca
When the road between Valldemossa and Deià was widened, this pine was in the way, and it stayed.
Matera
On the map it carries the shortest name available: Il Pino.
Menorca
Three pines were planted here.
Explore by city: Seville · Barcelona · Sorrento · Guimaraes · Madrid · Florence · Naples · Girona · Istanbul · Geneva · Cordoba · Setubal · Matera · Menorca · every city · or browse all species.