In your visit to the Huerto del Cura Garden, amongst the almost a thousand date palm trees (Phoenix dactylifera), typical of Elche, you will also find other trees typical of a traditional orchard in the outskirts of Elche: olive trees, several citrus and other not as well known, that we hope you discover as you wander around.
Starting with citrus fruits, present at the orchards throughout the Mediterranean coast, at our Garden, and together with the typical species of the area such as mandarin, orange, bitter orange, grapefruit and lemon tree, other species such as the ancestral citron (citrus medica), -origin of this family- are found. Those species are joined by other more exotic ones such as Buddha’s hand, caviar lime, calamondin orange, kumquat, limequat, citrus rosso, yuzu lime or citrus bergamot. Some of them originate from China, Pakistan, India or Australia.
There is also room for other more exotic palms, brought here from different continents and belonging to the same family as the date palm: the Arecaceae. We are lucky to have about 250 palms belonging to 70 different species within the Arecoideae y Coryphoideae
We keep other surprises in store such as samples from families similar to that of the palms, the Cycadaceae and the Zamiaceae families. We have placed at the bottom of some of them their data, to help you identify them.
These are the list of Cycadaceae & Zamiaceae that can be found nowadays in el Huerto:
One of the areas that currently raises more interest among the visitors to the site is the rock garden, which has an excellent collection of cactus and succulent plants, native plants of the driest regions in our planet which have adapted themselves to this land. Many of them come from the Canary Islands.
Our collection of singular palms species, which can live under our Mediterranean climate in Elche, is one of the highlights of the Huerto del Cura Orchard. The more than 70 different species of the Arecacease family (Arecales order), are scattered around every corner of the Huerto del Cura artistic garden.
These are the list of palm species that can be found nowadays in el Huerto: