Tricase's mapped tree stands on the roadside toward Santa Maria di Leuca: a Vallonea oak known locally as the Oak of a Hundred Knights, its canopy wide enough that Emperor Frederick II is said to have sheltered a hundred riders beneath it in a storm. Italy named it Tree of the Year in 2019 and sent it to compete for the European title the year after. Put at 700 to 900 years old, it is free to reach by car, on the ordinary roadside between Tricase and Marina Serra.
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Photo: FedericaPiccinniPhoto (CC BY-SA 4.0)
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Quercia Vallonea di Tricase
Valonia Oak (Quercus ithaburensis subsp. macrolepis) · roughly 700-900 years · Tricase, Province of Lecce, Puglia
Legend puts the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II and a hundred mounted knights under this oak's canopy during a storm, which is where its local name comes from: Quercia dei Cento Cavalieri, the Oak of a Hundred Knights. Nobody has ever documented the emperor's visit, and the crown alone makes the story easy to picture regardless: it shades nearly 700 square metres, wide enough that a hundred riders sheltering under it is an easy thing to imagine rather than an obvious exaggeration.
It is a Vallonea oak, a species barely present in Italy outside a handful of specimens, with a girth of about 4.5 metres and a trunk that has fed the region's leather-tanning trade for generations, its acorns rich in the tannin that trade needed. Sources put its age at 700 to 900 years, a spread nobody has closed, and give it the height of a middling office building, 18 to 20 metres.
Italy named it Albero dell'Anno, Tree of the Year, in 2019, sent it on to compete for the European title in 2020, and the WWF made it Puglia's own symbol tree back in 2000. It stands on the roadside between Tricase and Marina Serra on the way to Santa Maria di Leuca, at the southern tip of the Salento peninsula, free to reach by car, with parking that visitors describe as an afterthought for a tree this well known.
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