Sunday, February 19, 2012

The man with a wooden heart


This week marked the completion of a detailed record of the oldest and most outstanding trees in Catalunya’s Alt Penedès region [our home for the last 6 years.]

Manel Córdoba from Vilafranca del Penedès has now compiled this guide of more than 800 examples of nature’s treasures, a feat that took 10 years of rambling through the area’s forests.

Córdoba discovered a significant number of extraordinary trees, many of them seemingly unknown and previously undocumented. These include several huge olive trees, four of them being dated at over 2,000 years of age and a 7 metre high great oak near Font Rubi.

In 1999 Cordoba published a complete guide to the natural spring water “fountains” of the region but his current work has yet to find a home. He has also compiled lists and photographs of the waterfalls, lakes and dry stone huts of this part of the country.

[Photo above from an article in La Fura. Text translated from Catalan by Hugo and Brett Hetherington.]

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