It was even more admired, but an old man told them it needed a pitcher of the water of life, a branch where the smell of the flowers gave eternal beauty, and the talking bird.
At home, she planted the tree and watered it, and it grew, and the bird perched in its boughs.
The tale is one of the many variants of Aarne–Thompson–Uther type ATU 707, listed and analysed across sources in Spanish academia.
In this variant, a sister and a brother live together, but the sister, named Mariquita, is spurred by an old lady to send her brother for three fantastical objects: a fountain of silver water, a tree with silver leaves and nuts of gold, and a white parrot.
At the end of the tale, after saving her brother, the sister regrets sending him on that dangerous quest for her whimsical demands.