La Carcasa

A date palm is supposed to grow one trunk. This one grows more than 35, all rising from a single base and splitting again as they climb, until the whole plant reads less like a tree than like something caught mid-explosion. That is exactly where the name comes from: a carcasa is the spent casing of a firework shell, the part left behind after the burst, and whoever named this palm had clearly stood underneath one before. Phoenix dactylifera is the ordinary date palm grown across the Mediterranean and the Middle East for its fruit, and it only branches like this under unusual conditions, typically when an injury to the growing tip forces several new shoots to compete for the top rather than one taking over cleanly. Valencia's specimen has kept doing it long enough and thoroughly enough that the university's own botanic garden calls it the most special palm on the grounds, ahead of trees twice its height nearby. No age is recorded for it. The regional register that measures the garden's monumental trees left the girth column blank too, which makes sense for a trunk this divided; a single number would not describe it honestly. It grows in the Jardi Botanic de la Universitat de Valencia, a ten minute walk from Angel Guimera metro station, behind the same small entrance fee that covers the Kashmir Cypress and the Bottle Tree.