What is the oldest tree in Modena?
The oldest tree in Modena that anyone has actually dated is the pedunculate oak in the Giardino Ducale Estense, planted while Francesco V was duke and therefore around 175 years old, standing near the Corso Canalgrande entrance to the garden. Two others may well be older and nobody has dated either: the plane tree at the coach station, which the comune's own census calls the oldest plane in the city, and the holm oak of the Cortile del Leccio.
The oak's date comes with a small disagreement: one account has it planted at the centre of the garden in 1854, the comune's own says between 1840 and 1850. Both put it in the mid-19th century remaking of the ducal garden, so about 175 years, and it is a documented planting rather than a guess from the girth. It is also the thickest tree on this list at 5.4 metres round, and the most battered: lightning took much of its crown, it carries a dynamic bracing system, and certified climbers pruned deadwood out of it in 2022. The rival claims are undated rather than younger. The plane at the Autostazione was measured at 4.25 metres round in 1986 and has grown since, but nobody records when it went in. The holm oak in the Cortile del Leccio is given 120 years by one source and called secolare, age-old, by another, which in Italian can stretch to several centuries. If you can date either of them, we would like to hear it.
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