The Silver Lime and Fastigiate Yew of the Orto Botanico

The youngest tree the register protects in Lucca's botanical garden stands sixty metres from one of its slowest growing: a silver lime planted around 1900, its leaves silvery on the underside and turning up in wind, next to a fastigiate yew whose narrow, upright habit is not what makes it interesting. What makes it interesting is the girth. Yew adds wood at a crawl, and a columnar yew this thick, 2.60 metres round, has been doing it for a very long time even though nobody has put a number on how long. The lime is easier to date, if only just: the garden's own account, not independently re-checked this pass, gives around 1900, putting it at roughly 126 years old and the youngest specimen the monumental register lists here. Its own girth, 3.60 metres, is already considerable for a tree that young, a sign of how much room and light the garden gives its plantings. Neither tree carries much recorded history beyond its own measurements. They stand a short walk apart inside the Orto Botanico's paid grounds, on the same visit as the garden's older, better documented trees.