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All Mexico Santa María del Tule El Árbol del Tule (The Tule Tree)

El Árbol del Tule (The Tule Tree)

The stoutest tree in the world.

Santa María del Tule, Mexico

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More girth than any tree in the world.   http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0...
A bestiary of faces in the Tule Tree’s gnarled bark.   http://www.flickr.com/photos/iskir/4201929...
The Tule Tree, and the church that lives in its shadow.   http://www.flickr.com/photos/speedygroundh...
The Tule Tree and the garden of the Temple of the Virgin Mary of the Assumption   Joel Cusumano / Atlas Obscura User
Garden View   ski queen / Atlas Obscura User
Look at the tiny people   Mario Yair TS / Atlas Obscura User
“The Deer”, one of the Tule’s best-known figures   linkogecko / Atlas Obscura User
The thousand year-old “Son of the World’s Stoutest Tree”, found just around the corner from its ancestor.   linkogecko / Atlas Obscura User
Information display of the Tule   linkogecko / Atlas Obscura User
Zapotec language featured in Santa María del Tule.   linkogecko / Atlas Obscura User
  ski queen / Atlas Obscura User
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About

Located inside a gated churchyard in the picturesque town of Santa Maria del Tule, the Árbol del Tule is the widest tree in the world.

The local Zapotecs like to joke that the Tule shares some of their characteristics: it is short (only 35.4 meters in height), stout (11.62 meters in diameter), and old (about 1,500 years). Indeed the Montezuma Cypress (Taxodium mucronatum) is roughly as old as nearby Mitla, the Zapotec religious site whose ruins draw visitors east from Oaxaca.

Once thought to be so large that it could only have resulted from a merger between multiple trees, modern DNA analysis has confirmed that the Tule is, in fact, a single individual.

Though it is the Tule's spectacular girth that earns it a place in the record books, it is its gnarled bark that truly inspires the imagination. In its knots and crooks, visitors have found likenesses of human faces, lions, jaguars, elephants, and a veritable bestiary of other creatures.

The Tule Tree is still growing.

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Know Before You Go

Santa Maria del Tule can be reached by car by traveling east on Highway 190 from Oaxaca. Tour buses leave from Oaxaca every day of the week.The tree can be seen at all times, but if you want to get closer by entering the perimeter of the church, an MXN$20 ticket needs to be bought from a booth a few meters away.

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Edited By

Blindcolour, linkogecko, Mario Yair TS, ski queen...

  • Blindcolour
  • linkogecko
  • Mario Yair TS
  • ski queen
  • Joel Cusumano

Published

January 4, 2010

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El Árbol del Tule (The Tule Tree)
Santa María del Tule
Mexico
17.046368, -96.636332

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