Pino de las Dos Pernadas

At 56 metres this is the tallest native tree in Spain, and it stands 150 metres from the thickest one. Pino de las Dos Pernadas is the taller and slimmer half of the pair above Vilaflor de Chasna: about eight metres around against Pino Gordo's 9.36, and roughly 500 to 600 years old against its neighbour's 700 to 800. The name is a description rather than a story. At around ten metres up, the trunk divides into two limbs of near-identical thickness that carry on skyward side by side, two legs, dos pernadas, and the split is the first thing you notice from the bench below. On the age estimates it germinated somewhere around the Castilian conquest of the island in the 1490s, and it has spent the centuries since on a slope that burns periodically; like every Canary pine here its bark is thick enough to survive fire that would kill most conifers outright. The setting is the Corona Forestal at over 1,400 metres, looking out over the pine belt below Teide. It is free, on the same short marked trail from the same parking area on the TF-21, which is what makes these two a genuine pair rather than two entries that happen to share a road.