The Pine of Bofarull

A protected tree on the road to an airport is a strange combination and this one has held its ground. The Pi de Bofarull stands beside the airport road at Reus, 20.5 metres tall with a trunk 4.28 metres round and a crown 21.4 metres across, and Catalonia declared it a monumental tree in 1991, which means it cannot legally be felled however inconvenient the road becomes. Stone pine is the umbrella pine of the Mediterranean, the one with the flat top that everybody draws, and it is grown across Spain as much for the nuts as for the shade: the cones take three years to ripen and the kernels inside them are pinones, the most expensive nut in the country. A stone pine that reaches 20 metres has usually been left alone for a long time, because the species is normally kept low and wide. The register lists it as being in normal condition and, like every Catalan entry, gives it no age. This is the largest of the four trees on this page, which is the only ranking the data supports.