The Sixth Plane of the Giardino Pubblico

The ground under this plane was meant for a church. Before it was a garden, the plot on Via Giulia was earmarked for a church and housing, and when that plan was dropped the land was bought from Benedictine nuns. From 1854 Muzio de Tommasini, a botanist who was also Trieste's podesta, turned it into the Giardino Pubblico, and by the city's own account he planted its planes himself. This one stands at the western end of that planting, the farthest of them all from the great plane that holds the city's girth record. The regional register lists it at 4.37 metres round the trunk and thirty metres tall. That register is our only source for this particular tree: Italy's citizen tree register, which re-measured most of the garden's protected planes in 2021, has no entry for this sheet, so these figures have not been independently checked. They are plausible for the company it keeps, but they are one witness. Nobody has dated it on its own. Its size fits de Tommasini's planting, which would make it around 160 to 180 years old, and that is an inference rather than a record. The garden around it has grown to some 320 large trees, and a church was never built. If you measure it, or know more about this end of the garden, tell us.