The Canary Pine of Via Romana, Bordighera

Forty metres is the height Italy's national list of monumental trees gives this Canary pine, which makes it taller than any other tree on this page by a long way, on a street corner in Bordighera. Via Romana is the old road along the hillside above the sea, lined with the villas and gardens the British built here in the late nineteenth century, when Bordighera was a winter resort. The pine stands where Via Tumiati meets it, 3.9 metres round at the trunk on the register. The Canary pine comes from the mountains of Tenerife, La Palma and Gran Canaria, where it is famous for surviving forest fires: thick bark shields the trunk, and it can sprout fresh shoots straight from a burnt stem. Its needles come in threes and are very long, up to about thirty centimetres, and they hang in soft tassels. No one has published when it was planted. If you know, tell us. It sits between the Bicknell figs, a few hundred metres west, and the Scibretta, a few hundred metres east, so it is on the way. It stands in public street space and costs nothing to see.