A Near-Fireproof Tree

Botanist Bernabe Moya and his brother, environmental engineer Jose Moya, are tree experts who were studying an experimental forest in Andilla, Spain. In 2012, a fire swept through and destroyed the 50,000-acre plot. That was a heartbreaker.

But amid the devastation, they saw a sign of hope: a stand of 946 Mediterranean cypress trees, each taller than a two story house, that formed a perfectly square patch of green in the scorched landscape.
Bernabe Moya and his brother Jose couldn’t believe their eyes. And when they told their colleagues about the strange phenomenon, they couldn’t believe it either.
“We will have to find out what really happened,” Raúl de la Calle of the Official Association of Technical Forest Engineers told the Madrid-based newspaper El Pais in 2012. “The cypress is not a very combustible species, but to the point that it doesn’t burn at all. … There is no such thing as a fireproof tree.”

It’s true that the Mediterranean cypress can be burned, but it isn’t easy to do. The Moya and other scientists identified several factors that contribute to the cypress’s ability to withstand forest fires. That led to the idea of growing the trees specifically to protect forests. By planting firebreaks, or carefully planned areas of cypress trees among a forest, fires might be contained to small areas instead of spreading wildly. There are pros and cons to the plan, as you can imagine. Read about the unique Mediterranean cypress at the Washington Post.