The Downy Oak of Strada dei Conservoni

Four hundred and twenty seven centimetres round is a serious trunk for a species that usually stays modest. Quercus pubescens, downy oak, takes the dry limestone slopes better oaks refuse and grows into a gnarled, workaday tree of field edges rather than a giant, which is exactly why Italy's national register singles this one out. It stands alone on Strada dei Conservoni, a hillside road climbing to 450 metres, four kilometres from Perugia's walled centre and with no other registered tree anywhere near it. Perugia's other monumental trees mostly belong to a nineteenth century story, cedars planted when the city laid gardens over the ground where the papal fortress once stood. This oak is older news than that. Umbrian hillsides were oak country long before anyone planted an ornamental cedar, and a tree this size on a working lane is the landscape showing through the gardens rather than a garden itself. Downy oak earns a second look in winter. It is marcescent, holding its dead leaves through the cold months instead of dropping them, so the crown keeps a dry, rust brown rustle on the hillside long after its neighbours have gone bare. Italy's register is the only document that names this tree. It gives a girth, a height and a point on the map and nothing else, so there is no age here and the pin is marked approximate.