The tallest palm in the world
The wax palm takes eighty years to reach its height. Building beside it forces you to think on another scale of time.
Ceroxylon quindiuense — the wax palm of Quindío — is Colombia's national tree and the tallest palm on Earth. It grows to sixty metres and can live more than a hundred years. The one you see from the Cera house probably sprouted when your great-grandfather was a child.
It nearly went extinct. For generations its fronds were cut for Palm Sunday and its trunks for fences, until in 1985 it became a protected species. Today the Cocora valley is one of the few places you see them in numbers, rising above the mist like columns of a roofless temple.
Building beside it changes the conversation. A palm that takes eighty years to grow is in no hurry for anyone. It reminds you that you've arrived somewhere that does not run on your schedule.