More than 250 tree and shrub species grow in the forest, including huge centenarians and exotics introduced by Portuguese mariners during the Age of Discovery.

In 1634, for example, a Portuguese scholar authored a collection of poems that mentioned Buçaco's cypresses; in 1768 an English botanist provoked a 200-year-long debate by claiming one of the forest's cypress varieties originated in Goa; in the late 1990s wine writer Hugh Johnson visited the arboretum and described a Tasmanian mountain ash as "surely Europe's most magnificent"; more recently, historian and arborist Thomas Pakenham included one of the forest's bunya pines in his book, Remarkable Trees of the World.

Buçaco Forest was once home to Discalced Carmelites: the monks built a convent, small chapels and the encircling walls, and tended the arboretum until the dissolution of the monasteries in 1834.

[6] At the end of the 17th century small chapels representing the Stations of the Cross were built along the Via Sacra, a steep, winding path that leads from the convent to the forest's highest point, Cruz Alta.

[8] In September 1810 the tranquility was shattered by the Battle of Bussaco: the future Duke of Wellington, commanding an Anglo-Portuguese army of more than 56,000 men, maintained a defensive position on the Serra do Buçaco and succeeded in checking General Massena's advance into Portugal.

[14] The UNESCO website describes the forest as "the archetype of an eighteenth-century romantic landscape", adding that it "boasts a remarkable botanical and scenic heritage" and is a place of "rare and outstanding beauty".

[17] A year later the European Union's LIFE programme subsidized an initiative aimed at preserving the oldest segment of the forest and controlling threats posed by invasive, non-indigenous species.

[26] Ten years later further research into the tree's origins was undertaken using DNA tests: results showed that while the Mexican cypress is more likely to have been introduced to the forest from Mexico than India, the supporting data is "not very strong".

[29] In 2010 a researcher from Australia's Currency Creek Arboretum measured the tree during a field trip and concluded that it had the largest diameter of any eucalypt he and his team had examined in Portugal.

[35] Portugal's Público newspaper reported extensive damage to Buçaco Forest, including the loss of a cypress known as Cedro de São José, a much-loved tree believed to have been planted in 1644.

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