The Caucasian Elm of the Botanic Garden

At roughly 33 metres, this is one of the tallest things growing in Valencia's botanic garden, and it belongs to a species most visitors have never heard of. Zelkova carpinifolia comes from the forests of the southern Caucasus and northern Iran. It is an elm relative that grows a short trunk and then breaks into a dense sheaf of near-vertical branches, so the crown reads more like a bundle held upright than a spreading canopy. Its trunk measures 5.3 metres around at chest height. That is the figure in the regional register, and an independent field measurement taken in April 2014 put it at 5.27 metres, which is about as close as two separate people with tape measures ever get. Its age is not recorded anywhere. The garden moved to this site, the old Huerto de Tramoieres outside the medieval wall, in 1802, which sets a ceiling and nothing more. Beyond the register entry and that one measurement, this tree has almost no paper trail: no newspaper feature, no garden monograph, no planting note. For a tree this size that is unusual, and it is better said out loud than filled in with a plausible number. It shares the garden with the Kashmir Cypress, and one modest entrance fee covers both. In autumn the whole crown turns orange-brown, which is the species' best-known feature after its shape.