Calle Níspero

The name celebrates the loquat, a low tree with glossy evergreen leaves that produces small, golden fruit. The street belongs to an area of the barrio de Castilla where several streets bear the names of trees and plants, a custom that tinged the urban naming with countryside when these lands in northern Madrid ceased to be orchard and filled with buildings. Behind the tree lies a long journey. The one that grows today in Madrid gardens is the Japanese loquat, native to southeastern China and acclimatized over centuries in Japan before reaching the Mediterranean. Unlike almost all fruit trees, it flowers in late autumn or well into winter, so its fruit ripens toward the start of spring, among the first of the season. The word carries its own history: from the Greek méspilon it passed into the Latin mespilum, and in vulgar Latin the m shifted to n, giving the “níspero” we say.