The Caucasian Elm of the Giardini Reali

This tree is protected for being unusual rather than for being large. Zelkova carpinifolia grows wild in a narrow band of forest in the Caucasus and northern Iran, it is uncommon in Italian gardens, and Piedmont's register lists it on exactly that ground: botanical rarity. The trunk is three metres fifty around and short, and out of it comes the shape the species is known for, dozens of near-vertical stems rising together, so the whole tree reads as a vase rather than a dome. Its height is an open question. The regional register measures twenty-four metres. A published walking route through Turin's monumental trees says twenty-seven. Nobody has reconciled the two, and that gap is what happens when one figure is taken with an instrument and the other by eye. The register's age band is equally wide, a hundred to two hundred years. It grows in the Giardini Reali Inferiori, the lower royal gardens beside the Palazzo Reale, ground that belonged to the House of Savoy until the monarchy ended in 1946. The gardens were laid out for a court that wanted rarities, which is a large part of why a Caucasian tree is standing in the middle of Turin at all. In late autumn the whole crown turns orange-brown, and after the shape that is the moment the species is known for.