What is the oldest tree in Curinga?
Curinga's oldest and only mapped tree is the Platano di Vrisi, an Oriental Plane standing in the Vrisi locality off the SP 91 in Calabria. A dendrological survey on 28 January 2021 measured it at 31.5 metres tall with a circumference of 14.75 metres, figures that came with both a date and a method behind them, unlike older accounts that give a looser 18 to 20 metres. The trunk is hollow, with an opening more than three metres wide, big enough for a dozen adults to stand inside, and locally said to have once sheltered up to a hundred sheep. Its age is disputed between roughly 800 years, a professional field estimate, and over a thousand, the figure tied to a legend that Basilian monks planted it in the 11th century while building the nearby hermitage of Sant'Elia. Neither number comes from counting rings, since the trunk is hollow. The tree placed second in the 2021 European Tree of the Year contest and is listed on both Calabria's regional register of monumental trees and the national one.
The plane tree stands in the Vrisi locality just outside Curinga, in the province of Catanzaro, Calabria, reached off the SP 91 provincial road and then along a maintained path (un percorso attrezzato). There is no public transport to the site; it is reached by car and then on foot. The tree is a well-known local and national landmark, entered on both Calabria's regional register of monumental trees and Italy's national MASAF list, and it placed second in the 2021 European Tree of the Year public vote, which is one measure of how well visited it already is. No fee or permit is recorded, and nothing suggests restricted access. The species, Platanus orientalis, is native to Armenia and Western Asia rather than Europe, and is not the same tree as the London Plane hybrid that lines boulevards across the continent; a genuinely old Oriental Plane of this size is rare well outside its native range, which is part of what makes the Curinga tree worth the detour.
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