Singapore's Botanic Gardens once held a serious conifer collection where this mountain teak now stands, planted somewhere in the decades after Superintendent N.
Willowleaf Podocarp
Podocarpus neriifolius
Three of these stand on this site, two in Rome and one in Singapore, and each is protected for a different reason. We map 3 of them, in 2 cities.
Podocarps are a mostly southern conifer family that split off before pines existed and never adopted the cone: the seed sits instead on a swollen, fleshy stalk that turns purple and gets eaten by birds, which is how the species spread from the Himalayan foothills to New Guinea and why Buddhist communities planted it around temples across that range. Rome's Villa Sciarra specimen made Italy's national monumental register for a single reason, botanical rarity, with no claim to age or size at all; the city calls it splendid and enormous anyway. A second Rome tree, in Piazza Vittorio's garden, is one of the largest in the city and was listed in 2025. Singapore's grows on a lawn in the Botanic Gardens, its own age never recorded.
Singapore
Rome
Most trees earn a place on Italy's monumental register for being old or enormous.
Italy put this tree on its national monumental register in October 2025 for one reason: it should not be here.
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