The Bunya Pine of Villa Groppallo

A register once mislabelled this tree's girth as its diameter, which would have made the trunk over six metres wide rather than six metres round, a mistake plausible enough that nobody caught it until an independent citizen-science registry went out and measured the tree itself. Corrected, it still measures 6.36 metres around, among the largest bunya pines recorded in Europe. Araucaria bidwillii comes from the subtropical rainforests of Queensland, where its cones grow to five or seven kilograms and drop hard enough that parks close the ground beneath fruiting trees during the season. This one has stood in the formal gardens of Villa Groppallo, part of Genoa's seafront Parchi di Nervi, long enough that nobody agrees on exactly how long: the official monumental register gives a floor of 75 years from its original designation, while the citizen-science count that corrected the girth estimates closer to 115. Both figures come from the same kind of measurement read differently, so the honest range spans both. The Parchi di Nervi are Genoa's largest public park, free and open year round, though the villas converted to galleries inside it charge their own admission. The bunya pine needs no ticket, just a walk into the gardens from Nervi's own railway station.