The Camphor Tree of Villa Durazzo Pallavicini

Crush a leaf from this tree and your fingers smell of a medicine cabinet. Cinnamomum camphora is the source of camphor, distilled from its wood and leaves for centuries as a medicine, a moth repellent and the plasticiser that made celluloid film possible, and this specimen has reached 36 metres with a trunk 538 centimetres round. It grows at the edge of the lake in the park of Villa Durazzo Pallavicini in Pegli, which is not an ordinary garden. It was laid out in the middle of the nineteenth century by Michele Canzio, a set designer from Genoa's opera house, as a theatrical route in acts and scenes, complete with a Gothic ruin, a Chinese pagoda and an artificial lake you cross by boat to reach a temple. The camphor and the Cedar of Lebanon beside it are named together in the Ministry of Culture's own description of the park, which is a lot of official attention for two trees. The age is not documented for this individual: roughly 100 to 180 years is an estimate that fits both the trunk and the making of the garden, nothing firmer. Pegli is about fifteen minutes by regional train from Genova Piazza Principe. The park charges entry, closes on Mondays, and the full circuit runs to some three kilometres of path.