Madrid's coat of arms shows a bear reaching up into a strawberry tree, and this is the closest thing the city has to the original.
Strawberry Tree
Arbutus unedo
Madrid put one of these on its coat of arms, a bear reaching up into the branches, and the tree on the Plaza de la Lealtad is the closest thing the city has to the original. We map 5 of them, in 5 cities.
The species is normally a shrub you can see over the top of, which makes the one on Via alla Rocca in Bergamo peculiar: 16 metres tall, with a trunk 355 centimetres around. Catalonia declared one near Can Genoer, in the hill country of the Baix Emporda, a monumental tree in 2000, at 8.5 metres about as large as the species is known to get. Autumn is the moment to go. Arbutus unedo flowers and ripens fruit at the same time, so a single branch carries white bells and red fruit at once. Florence's grows in the Giardino dell'Iris, and another stands on a wine estate above Nice at the Chateau de Cremat.
Madrid
Florence
In fruit
The strawberry tree flowers and ripens fruit at the same time, so in autumn it hangs white bells and red fruit on the same branch.
Girona
The same thing has happened here as at Torrent, to a different shrub.
Nice
In fruit
This tree grows on a wine estate whose owners kept rebuilding the same hillside into ever grander versions of itself.
Bergamo
In fruit
Most strawberry trees are shrubs you can see over the top of.
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