The Cedar of Villa del Grumello

Six metres of trunk, standing directly in front of the house, in a park that grows a botanical collection dedicated to Pliny the Elder, the Roman naturalist Como claims as its own. The cedar came a great deal later than Pliny. The Italian tree register dates it to about 156 years, putting it in the ground around 1870, and the national register's girth of 595 centimetres matches the provincial survey's rough six metres almost exactly. Both rate it of national importance. Cedars of Lebanon do their growing outward. A tree of this age is young by the species' standards, and what it has already built is the flat tiered crown that makes a cedar readable from across a park, layer above layer, each one nearly horizontal. The four hectare grounds hold more than this one tree: pines, redwoods, and a camphor leaning at an angle that looks temporary and is not. The villa sits on the lakefront between Villa Olmo and Villa Geno and forms the middle stretch of Como's Kilometro della Conoscenza, the pedestrian path linking the three estates. One thing to plan around. The Grumello park does not keep ordinary park hours. Entry is free, it opens on Sundays and on weekdays, it shuts in the late afternoon rather than at dusk, and on Saturdays it does not open at all.