The Poet's Holm Oak of Montesignano
How do I find it? You can recognise it by its dark, hard, evergreen leaves, looking the same in January as in July. It stands on Via Mogadiscio in Montesignano, near the church of San Michele Arcangelo.
The civic group that runs computer lessons in this corner of Genoa named itself after a tree: Il Leccio di via Mogadiscio, the holm oak of Via Mogadiscio. That is what a neighbourhood landmark looks like when it appears on no tourist map. The oak stands in Montesignano in the eastern hills, near the church of San Michele Arcangelo, and both the national register and Liguria's separate regional list carry it, which is rarer than it sounds. They agree on 257 centimetres of girth and 15 metres of height, and the region records the reason for protection as historical, cultural and religious value rather than size. Genoese sources connect the tree to Camillo Sbarbaro, the poet of Pianissimo who spent his other working life as one of Italy's serious amateur lichenologists, collecting the lichens that grow on exactly this kind of old bark. We have not found the line or the poem, so treat the literary link as a local attribution rather than a quotable fact. Its age is unrecorded too. Italy's national register carries no age field for any entry anywhere in the country, so the 150 to 300 year span comes off the trunk and nothing else. Holm oak is evergreen, dark and hard-leaved, which means it looks much the same in January as in July, and it drops acorns sweeter than most oaks in autumn.
- Species
- Holm Oak (Quercus ilex)
- Girth
- 2.57 m
- Location
- Via Mogadiscio 10, Montesignano, Genova (near the church of San Michele Arcangelo) (Montesignano / San Desiderio, eastern hills of Genoa)
- Access
- not confirmed. Via Mogadiscio is a residential street in the Montesignano district; independent geocoding places it at roughly the same coordinates as the register (44.4389, 8.9665), and the Liguria regional listing ties the tree to the church of San Michele Arcangelo rather than a private garden, which is a good sign, but I did not find a source stating the tree stands on public ground or is visible from the street. A local civic-tech initiative is literally named 'Il Leccio di via Mogadiscio' after it (Genova Digitale ran information sessions there), which suggests it functions as a known local landmark rather than a hidden private specimen, but that is not the same as confirmed public access.
- Getting there
- AMT bus lines 480/482, stop 'Mogadiscio 6/Giacalone', about 1 minute's walk from the stop; total time from the city centre not independently timed, likely 20-30 minutes by bus
The button above opens directions in your maps app.
Sources
Where the facts on this page come from.
- https://cultura.gov.it (MASAF national monumental trees register, sheet 06/D969/GE/07, girth 257cm, height 15m)
- Liguria regional monumental-tree register PDF (agriligurianet.it, 'Elenco regionale degli alberi monumentali'), same sheet 06/D969/GE/07, same girt…
- genovatoday.it
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