Calle del Ombú
Takes its name from the ombú, the broad-crowned, swollen-trunked tree that grows alone on the plains of South America.
The ombú lends its name to Calle del Ombú, a short street in Atocha beside the tangle of streets around the Méndez Álvaro station. Why the street registry chose this particular tree has not survived on record.
The ombú (Phytolacca dioica) grows wild on the pampas of Argentina and Uruguay. It is no ordinary tree: its trunk swells enormously at the base, its roots surface and snake across the ground, and its wood is so soft and spongy that it serves barely for burning or building. That very fact saved it from the axe. In the middle of the shadeless plain, a lone ombú served as a landmark on the horizon and as shelter from the sun for the gaucho.
In Madrid, far from any plain, the name plants on the asphalt of Arganzuela the silhouette of a tree that will never shade this sidewalk.