I Bagolari di Piazza Giovanni XXIII

Three trees on Italy's national monumental register stand on one ordinary town square in Pioltello. Two of them are these hackberries, a matched pair a few metres apart: 390 centimetres round and 22 metres tall, beside a companion of 350 centimetres and 20 metres. The third is a yew, a few steps further on. The register lists the two hackberries separately and there is no sensible way to visit them separately. Somebody arriving at the piazza sees a pair, so that is how they are set down here, carrying the larger tree's figures, with the smaller one standing close enough that you cannot mistake which two are meant. Piazza Giovanni XXIII is not a park or an estate garden. It is the square of a commuter town on the Martesana side of Milan, free, ungated, open at any hour, and the trees are simply standing in it. The local paper's survey of monumental trees in the Martesana names both hackberries and the yew at this address without measuring any of them. The numbers come from the register. Getting there is honest work: fourteen minutes by train from Milano Centrale to Pioltello-Limito, then a walk of twenty to twenty-five minutes, which is longer than most stops on this map. No age is recorded for either hackberry, and none has been estimated. If you know what dates them, tell us.