The Poplar of the Renaioli

This poplar is named after a trade that has almost vanished from the Arno: the renaioli, the boatmen who dredged sand and gravel from the riverbed by hand for generations, a tradition kept alive today only by a cultural association that still bears their name. The tree stands near a stretch of riverbank called Lungarno dei Pioppi, Poplar Riverbank, whose own name almost certainly comes from trees like this one once lining the Arno here. Two surveys, Italy's national monumental tree register and Tuscany's own citizen register, independently confirm it under a single official file number, and the more recent of the two, from March this year, measured the trunk at 4.84 metres round on a tree standing some 18.5 metres tall. Its health is recorded as adequate rather than vigorous, and nobody has recorded its age: black poplars grow fast and unevenly, and no reliable estimate exists for this one, so the question stays open rather than guessed at. It stands on public ground in the Isolotto district, close enough to Florence's other western trees, the pine of Villa Vogel and the holm oak of the Cascine, to be part of the same afternoon's walk.