Il Tasso di Piazza Giovanni XXIII

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.