Arboreto Luis Ceballos, Botanical garden in San Lorenzo de El Escorial, Spain.
Arboreto Luis Ceballos is a collection of roughly 250 tree and shrub species on a mountainside slope with an extensive network of pathways and zones for different plant groups. The site sits at about 1300 meters elevation on the southern slopes of Monte Abantos and spans close to 4 hectares.
The arboretum opened in 1996 as a tribute to Luis Ceballos, a botanist whose work on Spain's plant life was groundbreaking. Ceballos had produced fundamental maps and studies of the country's forest ecology decades before.
The space is named after botanist Luis Ceballos and displays tree species native to Spain, including many rare varieties from the Pyrenees and the Mediterranean region. Visitors can encounter the natural diversity of these plants while walking through different planting areas.
The site is typically open on weekday mornings and weekends with shortened hours for visitors and requires advance registration. The pathways are well-maintained and allow a leisurely walk through the entire grounds at an easy pace.
The grounds sit at a location of botanical importance where the mountain vegetation of Spain's central plateau becomes clearly visible and shows rare elevation differences between plant species. This position makes it an important place to observe how vegetation changes with altitude.
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