El Árbol del Tule, Spanish for “The Tree of Tule”, is a mighty Montezuma cypress located in the town center of Santa María del Tule in the Mexican state of Oaxaca. Its existence has been chronicled for more than 2,000 years by both the Aztecs and the Spanish that founded the city of Oaxaca, making El Árbol del Tule one of the oldest tree in the world. Its knotted trunk and branches have taken different forms and with a little imagination one can see faces of goblins and monsters and animals.

It is also one of the largest tree in the world and believed to have the widest trunk. Measurements of its circumference, as reported by various sources, vary from 137 feet to over 170 feet. The trunk is so wide that as many as thirty people (some say fifty) with arms outstretched, joining hands are needed to encircle it. However, the trunk is heavily buttressed, thereby appearing thicker and giving a higher reading than it actually is. When this is taken into account, the diameter of the 'smoothed out' trunk comes out to be 30.8 feet, which is still slightly larger than the next most stout tree known, a Giant Sequoia with a 29.5 feet diameter.

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