The Blue Eucalyptus of Campu Omu

Sardinia has almost no native eucalyptus, and that is the point of this one. Eucalyptus globulus, the Tasmanian blue gum, arrived on the island as a reforestation and windbreak species, planted along roads and forest edges rather than admired for its own sake. This one, standing at the edge of the Foresta dei Sette Fratelli near Sinnai, ended up on Italy's national register of monumental trees anyway, one of relatively few eucalyptus to make that list in a country where the species is functionally an immigrant. The numbers disagree by about six percent, which for a tree this size is not much of an argument: the regional heritage portal measures the trunk at 4.9 metres round, the national register at 5.2, and both put the height at close to 30 metres. Age is recorded only loosely, as over a hundred years, which given how fast blue gums grow in the right climate could mean either a genuinely old specimen or one that simply had good conditions early. The forest around it is real, a reserve for the Sardinian deer and for mouflon reintroduced here from the 1980s, and the tree stands a fifty metre walk from a car park with full public access and no entrance fee. There is no bus route out here. The road is the only way in, about half an hour from central Cagliari.