The Magnolia of Villa del Grumello

The villa's own website lists magnolias among the centuries-old trees of its park, and that is as precise as anyone has been about this one. The national monumental register records a trunk of 330 centimetres, and the Italian tree register knows it as the Magnolia di Villa Grumello. Neither publishes an age, and no independent measurement exists to check the girth against, so this entry rests on thinner ground than the cedar and the ginkgo in the same grounds. It is on the register, it is where the register says it is, and beyond that the honest answer is that nobody has written the tree up. What you get is the plant itself, which needs no biography. Magnolia grandiflora came out of the American southeast in the eighteenth century and became the status tree of European villa gardens: evergreen, glossy, dark, and through May and June covered in heavily scented white flowers up to thirty centimetres across, visible from the far end of a lawn. It keeps its leaves through winter, so it looks much the same in January as in August, which is odd company for the deciduous giants around it. Entry is free, in a park that opens on Sundays and weekdays to a set schedule and stays shut on Saturdays.