The Rovere of Vallone San Giuseppe

The streets here are named after the dirt. Via Creta means clay, and clay is what was dug out of this valley to make bricks. It is also the ground this oak has spent its whole life in. It is a rovere, a sessile oak, 3.33 metres around the trunk according to Campania's regional card for it and 3.46 according to the national register, which is a thirteen-centimetre argument between two arms of the same state. It grew tall and straight rather than spreading, and about seven metres up the trunk divides into two main limbs. Around it stand hazels and a handful of other oaks on the steep left bank of a torrent that rises fifty metres higher, at the springs of Monte Vicalvano. That company is a remnant rather than a wood, which is part of why one oak on a stream bank ended up on a national register at all. The regional card calls it secolare, century-old, and offers no better number, so neither do we: over a hundred years, and nobody has said how much over. The most recent word on it is the 2008 regional survey the register was built from. Nothing suggests it has been lost, and it stands in a sheltered valley rather than on an exposed street. If you walk up from the station and find it there, we would like to hear.