A hackberry in the holm oak wood behind the Museo Carlo Bilotti carries a nickname rather than a certificate: locals call it il bagolaro del Seicento, the hackberry of the 1600s, though nobody has...
Mediterranean Hackberry
Italians call this tree spaccasassi, the stone splitter, because its roots get into paving and open it, and cities across southern Europe plant it in their squares regardless, because little else gives that much shade on that little water. This page maps every mediterranean hackberry on the site, 25 so far across 19 cities.
Celtis australis is deep rooted, drought hardy and indifferent to heat, with a smooth grey trunk closer to a beech than an oak and small dark berries that taste faintly of dates. Mostly it is treated as background, which is why the exceptions stand out. Istanbul protects one by name. Munich registers a group of eight as an extremely rare species, five hundred kilometres north of where the tree grows wild. And a hackberry in Zaragoza came third in Spain's national tree of the year vote in December 2025, put forward by five neighbourhood associations rather than the city. Sixteen are mapped, in thirteen cities, most of them Italian or Spanish.
Rome
Two official surveys measured this hackberry and agreed on its waist to within a centimetre: four metres around.
Rome's register carries two Mediterranean hackberries and they stand a hundred and twenty metres apart.
Milan
Photo: Sordelli (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Milan calls this species spaccasassi, the stone-splitter, for roots strong enough to crack paving, and this hackberry has had over a century and a half to test the claim against the paths of the ci...
The comune's own page for this hackberry calls it arcidiavolo, the archdevil, after a folk tale that blamed its hooked leaves on Lucifer, said to have carried the species down from heaven clutched...
Lisbon
One tree remembers the farms that used to be here.
Barcelona
Barcelona protected twelve trees across the city in one sitting in May 2024, and this hackberry in the Jardins dels Drets Humans was one of them, cited for size rather than age: a 2.9 metre girth a...
Madrid
The Plaza de Murillo, the small formal square between the Prado's south door and the gate of the Royal Botanic Garden, holds four catalogued conifers and one broadleaf that outgrew every one of them.
Seville
Not every tree on this list needed royal patronage or a foreign pedigree to earn its place.
Malaga
Hackberry wood was cheap and ordinary enough that for centuries nobody thought to plant it for looks: it went into barrel staves, walking sticks, fishing rods and farm tools, and children used its...
Venice
Two hackberries, the species Milan nicknames spaccasassi, the stone-splitter, for roots strong enough to crack paving, line the path toward a small theatre that has outlived every building that onc...
Geneva
A fungus is eating these three from the inside, and the city said so itself.
Trieste
For over 180 years this hackberry has stood in what is now Piazza Hortis, and for most of that time nobody thought about what people were doing to its roots.
Munich
Photo: Rufus46 (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Eight Mediterranean trees grow on a green strip beside one of Munich's busiest ring roads, in a city more than 500 kilometres north of where the species grows wild.
The hill in this park is what was left of Munich after 1945.
Turin
Photo: Emmanuelbaltasar (CC BY-SA 4.0)
This one stands by itself on open grass, which is why it looks the way it does.
Caserta
Ancient writers put this tree forward as the lotus that made Odysseus's crew forget the way home.
Istanbul
Istanbul protects this tree by name, which is unusual for a species most cities treat as background.
Zaragoza
In December 2025 this tree came third in Spain, with 1,799 votes, in a national poll for tree of the year.
Ferrara
Photo: Nicola Quirico (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Parco Massari has changed hands three times since architect Luigi Bertelli laid it out in 1780 for the Marchese Camillo Bevilacqua: to the Massari counts in the mid-19th century, who remade it as a...
Perugia
Italians call this species spaccasassi, the rock splitter, because its roots get into stone and open it.
Toulouse
The small dark berries on this tree are edible, and they taste faintly of dates.
This tree came up between two gravestones and neither of them has moved.
Toulouse's tree inventory files this one as libre, free grown, and that word is worth more than it looks.
Trento
Most hackberries with a trunk this thick are twice as tall.
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