The Paperbark of the Garden of the Princes

At 75 centimetres round, this is the slenderest tree Italy's monumental register lists anywhere in Naples, and it is on the list for what it is rather than for how big it got. The museum calls it a true rarity and says it grows in the Bourbon royal sites of Naples and effectively nowhere else in the country, planted here in the middle of the nineteenth century. Melaleuca styphelioides comes from the east coast of Australia, and the whole point of it is the bark. It builds in hundreds of thin papery layers, cream and pale brown, soft enough to press a thumb into, and it lifts off in sheets you could write on. Aboriginal Australians used exactly that: as bandaging, as roofing, as a wrapping for food cooked in ground ovens. The leaves are small and sharp, which is where the name prickly paperbark comes from, and in summer the tree carries short cream flowers like a bottlebrush. It stands nine metres, which for the species is respectable. Do not walk up looking for something monumental in the usual sense. This one asks you to come close and put a hand on the trunk.