The Patriarch
A giant jequitibá.
Bruna Leone Gagetti — CC BY-SA 3.0 · Sturm — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Carmen Macedo — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Sturm — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Edumurad — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Marcus V. Bellizzi — CC BY-SA 3.0
Vassununga State Park in Santa Rita do Passa Quatro, some 245 kilometres from São Paulo, protects 2,071 hectares spread over six separate patches of inland Atlantic Forest and cerrado savanna. It was created in 1970 after the collapse of a sugar company that owned the region's finest forest of «jequitibá-rosa» trees. The park is famous for holding what may be the world's largest collection of this endangered Brazilian tree, above all a giant known as the «Patriarch», forty-two metres tall and four metres across; it takes about thirteen people to hug it. Some researchers once put its age at more than three thousand years, but newer studies estimate it at around six hundred. Wildlife from both ecosystems lives here, including the puma, the maned wolf, monkeys and parrots. The park, run by the state forestry foundation, welcomes visitors daily, with organised groups by advance booking.
A giant jequitibá.
Atlantic Forest.
The Pé de Gigante patch.
Both sides of the Anhanguera highway at km 245, Santa Rita do Passa Quatro, São Paulo
Recent studies put it at about six hundred years.