The smallest tree on this square is the one to be careful about. The yew on Piazza Giovanni XXIII measures 140 centimetres round and stands 10 metres tall, well under half the girth of the hackberries a few metres away, and it is on the national monumental register regardless. Yews make a nonsense of judging a tree by its waistline. They grow slowly, and a modest trunk on a yew is not the evidence of youth it would be on a poplar. That is reputation rather than measurement, though, and nobody has done the arithmetic here: no growth rate has been applied to this trunk, no age has been derived from it, and guessing one would be worse than leaving the field empty. What it has instead is company. The register puts this yew and two hackberries on one small piazza in a commuter town east of Milan, and the local paper's survey of monumental trees in the Martesana names all three at the same address, which is how the yew stops being an afterthought beside the bigger pair. Three registered trees within a few metres of each other make one stop rather than three, about twenty minutes on foot from Pioltello-Limito and fourteen minutes by train out of Milano Centrale. Its age is recorded nowhere. If anyone has dated it, tell us.
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Getting there
Piazza Giovanni XXIII, 20096 Pioltello (MI), Italy
You can recognise it by the dark evergreen crown, 10 metres tall and 140 centimetres round, the smallest of the three registered trees on the square. It stands a few metres from the taller pair of hackberries.
Free, standing in the same ordinary public square as mil_028, a few metres away.
Same journey as mil_028: Pioltello-Limito station (Trenord/Trenitalia, Milano Centrale-Venezia line), about 14 minutes from Milano Centrale, then roughly a 20 to 25 minute walk to Piazza Giovanni XXIII.
In fruit
September to November: red arils on female trees, the only part that is not poisonous
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.
Sources
Where the facts on this page come from. The story was written with AI from these sources, and readers who know the tree correct it.
- In the official register: MASAF, Elenco degli alberi monumentali d'Italia
- MASAF national monumental-tree register, sheet 02/G686/MI/03, comune Pioltello, locality Piazza Giovanni XXIII, girth 140 cm, height 10 m ()
- primalamartesana.it
