The Sycamore of Villa Geno

At thirty three metres this is the tallest tree on Como's lakefront walk, and the only American on it. Platanus occidentalis is the sycamore of the eastern United States, a species Europe mostly grows as one parent of the hybrid London plane rather than in its own right, and a full grown one in an Italian park is unusual. Its trunk measures five and a half metres around. That figure comes from the national monumental register and is matched to within a few centimetres by a survey of the province's trees run by A Scuola dagli Alberi. Those two records are the only ones we have found for this tree, so read the numbers as well corroborated and the biography as absent: nobody has published an age, a planting date, or the name of whoever put it here. It stands a few dozen metres from the two Himalayan cedars and the ginkgo in the same clearing at the end of Viale Geno, where the promenade runs out at the water. Bark is the giveaway if you are unsure which tree you are looking at. Sycamores shed theirs in plates and leave the trunk mottled cream and olive, brighter and flakier than the plane trees in the squares behind you. Free, open, and a fifteen minute walk from the station.