Trees

Some photos of trees. Buenos Aires does trees very well indeed. There are seriously huge old ones in the plazas and avenues and the local government is forever planting more. The poor buggers have quite a job to do battling with heavy pollution. Not sure they're winning but we have to thank them nonetheless!

The national tree of Argentina is the palo borracho - or drunken stick - so named after the ability of the trunk to swell up as it stores water. Actually down here in Bs As they don't get all that swollen but apparently in the northern regions of the country they have the sort of bellies you generally only see in late maternity or on lunchtime habitues of the pub. Here are some flowering in shades of pink and white along Avenida 9 Julio. I could have got closer but I wanted to get the weird cupola in the frame:

A jacaranda last week - still putting on a show although it officially finished flowering a couple of months ago:

Lots of Jacarandas before Christmas, with the added bonus of Linda looking pretty cool in the foreground. We were on our way to a big shopping expedition and asked the driver to stop because the trees were so gorgeous. This is when they were in full bloom before coming into leaf:

Rubber tree in Plaza Congresso, the size of a very large house. Somewhere I have a guide book to Bs As from the 1920s, which has a photo of this tree already an impressive size. There a several of them in town and they have to be seen to be believed:

Palm trees in the Plaza de Mayo. If they could only talk.