How to be a monument and live to tell the tale...
In the shelter of their branches centuries of history, feelings and emotions are harboured; they are infused with a wisdom which has made them immortal. These are the giant trees, whose size and rarity, and the affection they receive from humans, make them special.
Spain has a greater wealth of native trees than any other country in Europe. Somewhat more than a hundred different trees grow naturally in its soils. The majority are found in woods and groves, for example the beech, oak, ilex, cork, gall-oak, Spanish fir, pine, willow, poplar and ash. However, such a range is only relative – in less that two and a half acres of virgin rainforest you can find 87 different species.
In addition to this long list of Spanish trees there is an ever increasing number of trees which have come to our land over the years, brought by custom and culture, travel and exploration.
These are exotic, non-indigenous trees, species that are not native to Spain but nevertheless can grow in some of the very different environments created by our weather, soil and geographical conditions. Some of them were brought here as trees for fruit production, for example the orange, mulberry and pomegranate trees, but the majority were brought in as ornamental and garden trees, such as the Moreton Bay fig, the cypress calvo de los pantanos, the coastal redwood, the Russian olive, the queen palm and the London plane. Nevertheless, Spain has one of the smallest ranges of ornamental trees in Europe, with only around a hundred species. In England, one plant nursery alone (Hilliers, established in 1864) sells 8,000 species and varieties of ornamental trees and shrubs.
Giant trees are of such symbolic and subjective value that it is difficult, inappropriate and maybe even pointless to try to make a list of the tallest, oldest or most important. They are all important, but more important and desirable still  would be that there were so many of them that such human shallowness would have no place.
What is more pressing and useful is to ask ourselves; What is happening to these trees? What do they need? What do we need to do to boost their numbers? Or, at the very least: How can we avoid damaging their potential immortality? More and more people are becoming aware of the unique value of giant trees, and of the fact that with care and dedication they themselves can play a part in protecting them. Spurred on by the local people, many of our town councils are now taking measures to protect giant trees by issuing new by-laws. Going down this road brings together the trees and their neighbours, to make history.
Be careful with the trees!
According to recent studies, 80 per cent of the giant trees listed at the beginning of the 20th century in Spain have disappeared. Where human settlement and activity have increased or changed, greater numbers of remarkable trees have been lost. This is what has happened on the coasts and in the centres and suburbs of our towns and cities, due to town, road and agricultural development, and forest fires.
Those trees that live inland, where there are fewer people and less human activity, have coped best. Today, these once forgotten trees are in fashion, inland tourism is making a claim on them and marketing them as places of interest. They are appearing in publications and more and more paths lead us to them; hopefully also to recognising their needs. But resources for the conservation of trees and their environment, and for monitoring their health, are scarce, almost non-existent. We need to secure concrete permanent support – scientific, financial and legal – for this natural heritage which is unique and invaluable.
Before publicising and promoting visits to these living momuments, it is necessary and more sensible to safeguard their conservation and protection, so that the visits, however necessary and however longed for, do not curtail the trees’ longevity.
Over the last 30 years, pure and applied research into woods and trees has enabled us to expand our knowledge of landscaping, trees’ defence systems against injury and the fungi that attack the wood, biomechanics, ageing processes and old age itself, conditions that help and hinder radical development, the trees’ relation-    ship with fungi and micro-organisms in the soil, etc. So today, at least, we know what we should not do to trees and their surroundings. It would be unforgiv- able if even one of these living monuments, that are important figures in, and silent, but not voiceless, witnesses to, our history, disappeared because of us.
Trees are immortal
Are trees immortal? The question is not an easy one for us mere mortals, who owe our lives to them in so many ways, to answer. Due to our selfishness and ignorance many of these extremely old living beings cannot answer the question themselves, but for more than 3,000 years the coastal redwood tree Sequoia sempervirens has provided the answer. It is one of the most popular, famous and revered species of conifer in the world. It is found in the humid mountain ranges of California and Oregon and is considered one of the largest and oldest trees on earth. When Western society ‘discovered’ the redwood groves in 1841 they covered large expanses of North America; 96 per cent of them have since been cut down.
For the last 25 years we have known that most trees work as colonies, in that the tree’s crown is made up of a number of basic elements called ‘repeat units’. Each repeat unit has the potential to develop, not from a seed but from a bud, into a separate plant, with stem, leaves, flowers and fruit and even roots in some species. Most of these repeat units only live for a few years, but the whole tree can live for more than 5,000 years, for example the Californian White Mountain Pine Pinus aristata. This strategy works very well for both the trees themselves and for the ecosystem, because it enables them to enjoy ‘potential immortality’. It does not mean that these trees never die, but rather, if they do, it is because of some external factor, for example climatic or environmental change, fire, frost, wind, lightning, disease, changes in their surroundings, the woodcutter’s axe or the timber merchant’s saw.
The Soul of the Elm
The world’s elms are in danger. The have almost been wiped out, under attack from a microscopic fungus which lives on the juicy flesh containing the sap of these symbolic trees. When an elm is affected by the fungus it dries up irreversibly because it cannot transport the water it needs, from its roots up to the leaves. This dreaded and devastating disease is known as Dutch Elm disease and has been laying to waste the world’s fertile lands, rivers, villages and footpaths, killing hundreds of millions elms, since the beginning of the last century.
The disappearance of the elms also affects the parasites that live off them, for example the tiny elm beetles that feed off the leaves, leaving only the  skeletons, and the bark beetles that prefer to spend most of their time inside the elms’ trunks. They are all heading towards a dead end, and neither science nor technology has been able to come up with an effective treatment.
Majestic elms were planted as ‘trees of freedom’ in the old town centres, squares, religious sites and gathering places of many Spanish towns to mark the signing of the first Spanish constitution. Wiped out by the disease, immense wildernesses are filling the hearts of our squares, leaving terrible gaping holes in our memories and our own hearts, which as yet no one has tried to fill.
The Elm of the Chapel
Text and Sculpture: Equipo Arrels
The Elm of the Tuéjar chapel, Valencia, has died. It no longer welcomes the friendly faces of those coming home to the village and being greeted by the magnificent elm. It waits for them there with the calmness and kindness that only trees know. The houses and their inhabitants were sheltered in the elm’s shade, the town itself was gathered up in the lap of the mountain and the elm. Men, women, children, old people... put their arms around its waist, its trunk, feeling its size, embracing it with so much love… what an elm it was.
With the villagers of Tuéjar, we witnessed the elm of the chapel’s dying moments, the moment in which its life slowly came to an end. But the elm’s suffering has brought hope for other revered trees. The care and attention that it needed helped to make a large sector of society and its representatives aware that all giant trees need to be looked after, which is still today so important for both them and for us.
As we and the villagers of Tuéjar looked upon the enormous remains of what was once a living momument, we asked ourselves, What should we do with the elm of the chapel? We quickly realised, ‘The tree has died but not the symbol!’ We agreed that this revered tree’s destiny should not be a noble but short-lived death by fire. We ought to keep it amongst us for as long as possible. We would erect, with its bodily remains, a tribute to the elm of the chapel, to all the elms of the world, to the trees of freedom, to the trees in our village squares, to the hard-working villagers, to the tiny and defenceless insects, to the fertile lands, to the earth, and also to life.
The Castellnovo elm, in Castellón, is one of the last living examples of the Ulmus minor species which were planted in 1812 to mark the signing of Spain’s first constitution. It presides over the town/village square after which it is named.
The Elm in Aras de los Olmos
The inhabitants of the town of Aras de los Olmos sadly watch the death of the town square’s elm earlier this year. This symbolic tree presided over the life and events in this town in the Valencian sierra for many generations.
The Soul of the Elm
Sculpture built with the remains of the Elm of the Chapel in Tuéjar, Valencia, which died from Dutch elm disease. Attempts should be made to preserve the lifeless remains of giant trees, along with their historical legacy.
A Very Old Chestnut!
There are many giant chest- nut trees in the Ancares Leoneses national game reserve that are destined to live forever. Many of them, whose trunks have a girth of more than 14 metres, still provide nuts for the people of these forgotten Spanish lands. They are now endangered because of large-scale uprooting, to meet the demands of the car industry for the chest- nut finish on its top-of-the-range cars.
The Rubber Plant in the Corts Valencianes
When the gothic palace of the Dukes of Gandia was finished in 1520 (now the Benicarló Palace and the seat of the Corts, the Valencian parliament), it had an irregular-shaped walled garden at the back. At the end of the nine- teenth century and the beginning of the twentieth the palace was restored several times, and during one of these restortions the Moreton Bay fig (Ficus macrophylla) was introduced. At the time, exotic gardens adorned with trop- ical plants were in fashion. Until 1998 there were two of the figs in residence in the garden, but fate intervened and one of them fell down; the sculpture ‘Fig 98’ created by the ‘Equipo Arrels’ now pays tribute to the tree.
World Heritage
The recent naming by UNESCO of the palm groves in Elche as a World Heritage site underlines the immense value of trees and, in particular, of palms. The Elche palm groves have in the past suffered serious attacks: many of the palms that adorn our Mediterranean landcapes come from this group of palm groves in the province of Alicante. The empress palm, which was given its name after a visit by the Empress Sisi, is a remarkable example of this rare tree because its shape is like that of an eight-branched candle- stick.
Travinas Las Blancas
The thuriferous juniper tree can grow in open wood- land in cold, high, dry areas. In the inland areas of the province of Valencia there is a local name for them, travinas. These trees are associated with cattle farming, because for more than a million years they have been used as fodder for cattle during harsh winters. Today, changes to the agricultural landscape and a move away from these cattle-rearing areas, have endangered this botanical relic, which dates back to the time of the dinosaurs.
Ancient Olives
La Morruda in Segorbe, Castellón, is one of the last remaining ancient olive trees growing in its natural habitat in the country. Until only a few years ago there were olive trees of a similar age in most of our village fields. La Morruda was saved from being uprooted or cut down by the concern of the people of Segorbe who united in its defence. The tree has been restored and its surroundings made suit- able for visits.
Zacate of Dénia
Zacate is a name of Nahuatl origin which the indigenous people of the Valle de México region of Mexico gave to a magnificent tree of the Agavaceae family. The oldest and largest zacate in Europe is in Dénia, on the site of a sixteenth century farm. It was planted by a sailor and local trader, who, on one of his trips to Mexico, was struck by its strange, impressive appearance, even before the species was first described by the botanists of the ancient world. In spite of the fact that it has been designated a tree of local interest it has been uprooted and moved without authorisation from the council. This species (Nolina recurvata), is also under serious threat in its small, arid home region, mainly due to the fact that people uproot the trees and plant them in their own gardens.
The oldest cypress in Spain
In the enclosed convent of the Annunciation in Villafranca del Bierzo, León, grows one of the oldest and least known cypresses in Spain. It was planted by the convent’s founder in 1606: its trunk measures more than a metre and half in diametre and it reaches a height of 33 metres. At the present time it is being restored in preparation for its 400th birthday.