The Chilean Wine Palm of the Parco Marsaglia

The Chilean wine palm is one of the most massive palms there is, and it grows slowly enough that a trunk like this one, 3.34 metres round on Italy's national list of monumental trees, takes a long time to build. The Chilean wine palm comes from a small strip of central Chile, where the wild trees were felled for centuries for the sweet sap that gives the species its name. Here it stands in the Parco Marsaglia, the garden that survived the Marsaglia family's turreted villa. Giovanni Marsaglia helped build modern Sanremo in the second half of the nineteenth century; the house was wrecked in the Second World War and pulled down, and the town kept the garden. The Italian Botanical Heritage directory calls this specimen mammoth, and it sits among Brazilian queen palms, Kentia palms, a dragon tree and cycads. The park opens off the Corso Imperatrice, the seafront avenue named after the Russian empress Maria Alexandrovna, who gave palms to line it. No one has published when this palm was planted or how old it is. If you know, tell us. Our pin is the register's point; the palm is the stout grey column with a dense crown. It costs nothing to see.