The Turkey Oak of Villa Serra

At 41 metres this is the tallest of Villa Serra's four monumental trees, taller than the Californian redwood standing sixty metres away, which is not what anyone expects from an oak. Quercus cerris is fast and tall by European standards, native to southeastern Europe and Asia Minor, but it usually tops out around thirty metres. Getting past forty takes shelter, water and a long undisturbed run, and a valley-floor park in Val Polcevera supplies all three. The register puts its girth at 378 centimetres. You can tell it from the pedunculate oak a few paces away without knowing anything about oaks: the leaves are stiffer and more deeply cut, the buds sit inside thin whiskery scales, and the acorn cups look mossy, wrapped in the same curled filaments. Villa Serra is in Comago, in the comune of Sant'Olcese, up the valley from Genoa rather than in it, and its English-style grounds date from the middle of the nineteenth century. The tree's age follows from that, roughly 120 to 170 years, an estimate drawn from the planting era and the trunk rather than a dated record. No source gives it a year, and Italy's national register has no age column at all.