Pino Gordo

Vilaflor de Chasna put this tree on the town's coat of arms, which is a fair indication of how the place rates it against everything else it owns. Pino Gordo is a Canary pine with a trunk 9.36 metres around, the thickest native tree in Spain and widely called the most voluminous pine in Europe. It is also over 45 metres tall, which almost anywhere else would be the headline and here is not even the record at this viewpoint: the tree 150 metres up the trail is eleven metres taller. Estimates put it at roughly 700 to 800 years, meaning it was already a substantial pine when Castile finished taking the island in 1496, and a seedling several centuries before that. The bark carries fire scars. Canary pine is one of the few pines able to resprout straight from a scorched trunk, which is how a tree can spend seven centuries on a dry volcanic slope that burns and keep its crown. It grows at over 1,400 metres in the Corona Forestal, the pine belt that rings Teide, and reaching it costs nothing: a signed parking area off the TF-21 toward the Parador, then a marked trail of 150 to 200 metres, with benches and information panels at the tree.