The California Fan Palms of the Zampillo

These palms are protected as a group, which Italy's national list of monumental trees does only when the stand matters as much as any one trunk. They rise around the Zampillo, the fountain on Corso Orazio Raimondo in the middle of Sanremo. The California fan palm grows wild along desert streams in California, Arizona and northern Mexico. It reached Europe in 1871, and by 1882 it was already common in Sanremo's gardens, according to the city's own garden guide, which also records the first flowering of the species in Europe here, in 1891, in the garden of the West-End Hotel. In other words this is a town that took to the tree early. The species is easy to tell from the date palms around it: a straight, stout trunk, and huge fan-shaped leaves edged with white threads. Left alone it keeps its dead leaves as a brown skirt under the crown. The register gives no count, no height and no planting date for these, and no one else we found has either. If you know when they were planted, tell us. They stand in public street space in the centre of town, so seeing them costs nothing.