Árbol del Tule

El Árbol del Tule is a Montezuma cypress — an ahuehuete, "old man of the water" in Nahuatl — growing in the churchyard of Santa María del Tule, a small town in the valley of Oaxaca. It has the stoutest trunk of any tree known: in 2005 its girth measured 42 metres, and even after allowing for the deep buttresses and folds of the bark, its smoothed-out diameter of about 9.4 metres is wider than that of the largest giant sequoia. The crown is so broad that its height is hard to measure; a laser survey in 2005 gave 35.4 metres. It was once thought to be several trees grown together, but DNA tests showed it to be a single individual.

Nobody knows exactly how old it is. Estimates run from 1,200 to 3,000 years, with the best estimate from growth rates at roughly 1,433 to 1,600 years. Zapotec tradition holds that it was planted some 1,400 years ago by Pechocha, a priest of the wind god Ehécatl, which agrees surprisingly well with the science. Other local stories say the town sits on a hidden lake and that the tree acts as its stopper — if it ever dies, the water will return. The Zapotec called it by names meaning "paper tree" or "shining tree", and travellers from José de Acosta in the 16th century to Désiré Charnay in the 19th described the respect of the villagers, who swept the ground beneath it and would not allow a single branch to be cut.

Walking around it takes a while, and part of the pleasure is in the details: locals point out shapes in the twisted bark — a crocodile, a deer's head, an elf — and the tree shares the plaza and the church atrium with the town's 18th-century Baroque church of the Assumption, built of stone over an ancient shrine. Other old ahuehuetes grow around the town, but none comes close.

Getting there

Santa María del Tule lies about 10 km east of Oaxaca city on Highway 190, the road to Mitla, and the tree stands in the town centre beside the church. The nearest airport is Oaxaca's Xoxocotlán International (OAX), about 11 km away.