The Fifth Plane of the Giardino Pubblico

On the regional register's figures, the tallest tree in the Giardino Pubblico is not its biggest. This plane is listed at thirty-five metres, a metre higher than the great plane that holds the girth record for all of Trieste, on a trunk of 4.65 metres round, nearly eighty centimetres slimmer. If the numbers hold, it has put its growth into height where its neighbour put it into bulk. The caveat is real. This tree's sheet appears in the national and regional registers but not in Italy's citizen tree register, which re-measured most of its siblings in 2021, so nobody has published an independent check of this trunk. The register is the only witness, and a height taken on a thirty-metre crown is harder to get right than a girth taken with a tape at chest height. It belongs to the garden Muzio de Tommasini, botanist and podesta, laid out from 1854 on land bought from Benedictine nuns, where by the city's own account he planted the planes himself. No source dates this tree individually; its size puts it plausibly in that first planting, around 160 to 180 years. If you stand under it with a rangefinder, or know the story of this corner of the garden, tell us. A tree this tall deserves a second measurement.