The Elm of Maso Ginocchio

Europe lost most of its mature elms inside a single lifetime, and this one is still standing. Dutch elm disease is a fungus carried by bark beetles that blocks a tree's water vessels from the inside. It swept the continent from the 1930s and killed elms by the tens of millions, which is why an elm of any size is now worth going to see. The Italian tree register notes exactly that about this one, that it came through while others nearby did not. Its trunk measures 393 centimetres around, past the threshold that gets a tree onto the national monumental register on girth alone. No age has been recorded for it, and no height either. The register's description is honest about the setting: the tree sits in a corner of the garden and takes some finding, then stops being easy to overlook once you are in front of it. The Giardino di Maso Ginocchio is an ordinary municipal park, about 3.6 hectares in the San Giuseppe and Santa Chiara district south of the centre, with a playground, a small animal enclosure and entrances on Via Veneto, Via Giusti and Via Monte Baldo. Local reporting in 2016 grumbled about its upkeep. It is free and it is open, and the elm is the reason to walk the fifteen minutes out.