The Tree of the Newlyweds

Two enormous branches rise parallel to the trunk like a pair of horns, and Florence has been making the obvious joke for generations: locals know this tree as l'albero dei cornuti, the tree of the cuckolds. Newlyweds pose in front of it anyway, in such numbers that it picked up a politer second name, l'albero degli sposi, and both names are still in use. It is an incense cedar, native to the mountains of Oregon and California, and its trunk is five and a half metres around at chest height, which for the species in Europe is close to extraordinary. It stands to the left of the central flowerbed in the Giardino del Bobolino, the middle section of the English-style garden Giuseppe Poggi built along the Viale dei Colli between 1865 and 1877, when Florence was briefly the capital of Italy and Poggi was rebuilding its hillsides. Crush a fallen leaf spray and it smells sharply resinous, which is where the name comes from. A severe storm in the winter of 1985 damaged the trunk badly and it recovered. The city gave it formal protection in 2020. The cedar of Lebanon on this page stands a few steps away, so the two are one stop, not two.