Wild Olive

All three grow in Sardinia, in the granite hills of Gallura and the coast of Ogliastra, and together they are the closest thing Italy has to an age record. S'Ozzastru, at Santu Baltolu di Carana near Luras, is Italy's oldest living tree by most estimates: the University of Sassari puts it at 2,500 to 4,000 years, its trunk 11.5 metres round, and Sardinians call it su babbu mannu, the great father. A second, unnamed olivastro grows a few metres along the same path, half the girth at 5.4 metres and overshadowed by its neighbour, though nowhere else on the island would it go unnoticed. The third stands alone in the village square of Santa Maria Navarrese, beside a church five centuries its junior, its trunk scarred by an arson attempt in the early 1960s that it survived. All three were declared natural monuments by the region, in 1991 and 1994, and all three are free to visit.