The Moreton Bay Fig of the Mendoubia

Guides and park signs in Tangier call this tree 800 or even 1,000 years old. The reader who sent us its photograph disagrees, and puts the case in one line: that age “predates the historical introduction of Australian flora to the Mediterranean basin by several centuries.” The Moreton Bay fig, Ficus macrophylla, comes from the coastal rainforests of eastern Australia. In the reader’s account this one was planted between the 1880s and 1900s, beside the residency of the Mendoub, the Sultan’s representative to Tangier’s international administration. That makes it roughly 120 to 140 years old, by a reader’s estimate. Young, then, next to the legend, and still enormous. The photograph shows the trunk opening at its foot into wide, plank-like roots that run out across the grass, under a dark evergreen crown that shades the lawn and the white walls of the Mendoubia behind it. The reader gives the trunk as about 2.2 to 2.8 metres across, with the root flare more than 10 metres around. In their words, the tree “survived the transformation of the site from administrative grounds and adjacent cemeteries into the public city park that stands today.” That park is the Mendoubia gardens, beside the Grand Socco. Wikipedia’s page on the Mendoubia mentions a large tree in the grounds said to be 800 years old, which is the figure the reader set out to correct. If you go, a tape around the trunk would settle the girth.