La Quercia Rossa di Piazza XXIV Maggio

This oak was already growing in an American nursery when Milan was still deciding what to do with the site of one of its six historic gates. Giunio Capè had the sapling brought to Piazza XXIV Maggio at the end of the First World War and planted it in 1924 in memory of his son Giuseppe, an Alpine soldier who survived the war, and of the Alpini who did not. A century later the oak stands nearly 20 metres tall with a trunk just under 5 metres around, held up since 2019 by a discreet steel exoskeleton a Bergamo carpentry firm built to support a crown that had begun to outgrow its own structure. Quercus rubra is native to eastern North America and turns a deep, almost oxidised red in October and November, the colour that gives the species its name and, briefly each autumn, the only real red in a square better known for the nineteenth century customs arches of the old Porta Ticinese behind it. Milanese press sometimes calls it the oldest tree in the city; it is not, several trees on this list are older, but it may be the only one whose exact planting date and reason for standing there are both on record.