The South American country of Uruguay is home to a unique eucalyptus plantation with a very distinct shape that can only by admired from high above.
Up until a few years ago, few people even knew that the Florida Goblet existed. It wasn’t until Google Earth became a thing that people discovered its unusual shape. To some, it looks like a goblet with a crown on top of it, while others see a chandelier, but the thing that everyone can agree on it its massive size. The plantation measures about 500 meters long by 235 wide and the lines that make up the top and bottom of the design are around 13-meters-wide. It’s so large that from the ground, you could never tell it has this peculiar shape.
Photo: Marcelo Campi/500px
The Florida Goblet, or “El Candelabro”, as some of the locals know it, is located in a rural area of Uruguay, about 12 kilometers from the city of Florida, at latitude 34 ° 12’40.03 ″ S, longitude 56 ° 9’4.85 ″ W. One of the best way to inspect this unusual landmark is via Google Earth, the same online tool that made it famous on the internet. You can also see it from a plane, or by using a drone, although you’d have to fly it pretty high to capture it in all its glory.
So why is this Uruguayan eucalyptus plantation shaped the way it is. There isn’t a lot of clear information on that, but according to some of the comments on this 2011 article in El Pais, it’s actually the cattle brand of the rancher that owns the land the trees are planted on.
In Uruguay cattle have been branded by their owners since the early 19th century, and in the beginning, every rancher designed their own brand. Nowadays, the Rural Code forces cattle owners to go trough the Registry of Marks and Signs to prove ownership of their animals.
It’s estimated that the eucalyptus plantation was planted over 50 years ago, but its shape remained a mystery to the world until the 2000s. It consists of just under 24,000 trees.
The Florida Goblet is just one the unusual tree plantations we featured on Oddity Central. For more such oddities, check out the world’s largest signature, the Smiley Face of Oregon, and the Lenin-shaped forest of Siberia.
