“I love you”. Faced with a phrase so simple and so full of feeling, it can be thought that it is incapable of causing any harm. However, if it is engraved with a knife on the bark of a unique tree in the city, it becomes an act of vandalism that, probably, whoever committed it is not even aware of what he has done. The tree that has suffered this vandalization is the baobab, a specimen native to Africa, which is planted on the corner of El Pilar and Suárez Guerra streets. This specimen is the only one that is in the streets of the city and only in the Palmetum can this arboreal species be found, which grows in the semi-arid areas of continental Africa, and can reach between five and 30 meters in height.
In the specific case of this monkey bread, as it is also known, it was donated to the city by the Consulate of Senegal, at the request of the Department of Parks and Gardens carried out in 1999, in order to recover the historic tree known as Baobab from the Jewish alley, which, according to the chronicles, was sacrificed in 1881 to expand said alley, which today corresponds to Adelantado Street, which connects El Pilar Street with the Plaza del Príncipe. This baobab was planted during the execution of the works of the pedestrianization project of the city center.
From the Parks and Gardens area, competences that are under the direction of the Councilor for Public Services, Guillermo Díaz Guerra, a call is made to respect the specimens located in the city, of any type, remembering that they are part of the natural heritage of Santa Cruz, the same one that makes it one of the cities with the most plant species in the country.
