The Chilean Wine Palm of Villa di Rusciano

This palm was very nearly harvested out of existence for its sap, which was boiled down into a honey. Getting the sap meant felling the tree. Jubaea chilensis carries one of the thickest trunks in the palm family, a grey column more than a metre across, and it grows slowly enough that a tapped tree meant a century of growth spent on a single harvest of palm honey. Chile's wild population collapsed under that trade and now survives in a few protected valleys. The species is also among the hardiest palms there is, which is how it reached Italian villa gardens in the nineteenth century: a palm that could take a frost was worth a great deal to anyone laying out an exotic garden in a climate that kills most of them. This one measures 349 centimetres around and stands 15.5 metres, in the park of a municipal villa east of the centre. Its record is a single line, the national listing of monumental trees with the city republishing the same entry, and it carries no age and no planting date. It sits well east of the hillside trees and makes its own errand rather than joining a walk. Whether that is worth an afternoon depends on how many palms with a trunk like a stone column you have stood next to.