The Greek Strawberry Tree of Miramare

This is a shrub that forgot to stop. Arbutus andrachne normally tops out as a thick bush on a Greek or Turkish hillside, and the Italian register lists this one at 2.04 metres round the trunk and twelve metres tall, which for the species is close to absurd. It is the reason the tree is protected on botanical rarity as well as on size. The bark is the thing to look at. Each summer the outer layer peels away in thin sheets like sunburn, and what is left underneath is a bare trunk the colour of cinnamon, cool and slightly waxy to touch, with no fissures anywhere on it. Run a hand along it and the surface feels closer to skin than to timber. Maximilian's gardeners planted it after 1856 among the Mediterranean species that were meant to prove the headland could hold a garden, and unlike the common strawberry tree it was never a safe bet this far north. Fifty-nine of its common cousins, Arbutus unedo, grow a couple of hundred metres away as a registered stand, and none of them has done what this one did. Its flowers come as small white bells in spring, its fruit as round orange berries.