The Black Poplar of Via Conca d'Oro

Making a monument of a black poplar is a bet against the species. Populus nigra grows fast on soft wood, hollows early and starts shedding limbs while an oak of the same age is still filling out, which is why few of them get old anywhere and fewer still on a city street. This one is 4.05 metres round with twenty metres above it, at the junction of Via Conca d'Oro and Via Val d'Ala. Rome's register carries three black poplars. The other two sit 14 and 25 kilometres out, one towards the coast at the Risaro and one in Ostia, which leaves this the only one a visitor is likely to reach. Montesacro was farmland until the 1920s, when the city laid out a garden suburb across the Aniene and planted its avenues. Nothing records when this poplar went in, and the Italian register has no age field to put it in even if something did. One caution. The Lazio regional list still carried the tree in its November 2025 edition, and that list keeps a separate sheet for trees struck off it, with the reason each was removed, which is the closest thing this country has to a public check that a monumental tree is still standing. Nine months is a long time in the life of a poplar.