The Chestnut of the Passo Furchè, Ceriana
Eight and a half metres round and only five metres tall: that is how Italy's national list of monumental trees measures this sweet chestnut on the Passo Furchè, a pass on the mountain ridge above Ceriana. A trunk that thick on a tree that short is the shape of a very old chestnut that has lost its top and kept going. A mountain-bike guide to the ridge route calls it a 1,300-year-old chestnut and says it is worth the trip on its own. Nobody has measured its age, and a Swiss survey of monumental chestnuts warns that girth is a poor clock: a trunk of eight metres could mean anything from three to seven centuries. So we leave the age open and let the trunk speak. Ceriana sits among chestnut woods, olive groves and flower fields in the upper Armea valley, and this tree stands high above it, on the dirt ridge road that runs under the Fascia d'Ubaga towards Monte Furchè. Getting here is part of the trip: a long climb by car or bike, then gravel. It stands on open mountain land and costs nothing to see.
In bloomIn fruit
The line is our estimate of how much there is to see, not a measurement. Typical for this species where this tree stands; exact weeks shift with the year.
Passo Furchè, on the ridge road above CerianaYou can recognise it by the trunk, enormous and squat, eight and a half metres round but only about five metres tall, beside the gravel ridge road at the Passo Furchè.
Free: open mountain land beside the ridge road; the last stretch is a gravel track.
On the ridge above Ceriana, about 17 km straight line from Pontedassio; by car on a long climb, the last part gravel.
Sources
Where the facts on this page come from.
- In the official register: Elenco degli alberi monumentali d'Italia (MASAF), no. 01/C511/IM/07
- gulliver.it
- waldwissen.net
