The Leccio of the Lake

Marcantonio IV Borghese tore out six hundred holm oaks in 1784 to build an English-style garden around Villa Borghese's lake, and one tree, by luck or design, was left standing. This is that leccio, growing at the water's edge in what locals once called the Piano dei Licini, the holm oak plain, before the prince's landscapers decided a lake and a temple suited fashionable taste better than a forest. Italy's national tree registry measures its trunk at 4.3 meters around and calculates an age of 176 years from growth data, a figure that would place its planting after Borghese's makeover rather than before it. Older estimates, based on the site's documented history rather than direct measurement, put it closer to 300, arguing it is one of the few survivors of the original grove. Both cannot be right. This page gives both rather than pick a side. What both agree on is the tree's stature: 19 meters tall, its dense evergreen crown reflected in the artificial lake that replaced six hundred of its relatives two and a half centuries ago.