The Hackberry of the Valentino

This one stands by itself on open grass, which is why it looks the way it does. A Mediterranean hackberry with room on every side builds a wide even dome, and this one carries twenty-three metres of height over a trunk four metres seventy-five round, at the northern end of Parco del Valentino near Corso Massimo d'Azeglio. Celtis australis is southern European, tough, and largely ignored, which is a shame, because the wood used to be the reason anyone cared about it. It is flexible enough that whip handles, walking sticks and pitchfork shafts were made from nothing else, and the trade lasted into the twentieth century. The leaves are lopsided at the base, long pointed, and rough on the upper side like fine sandpaper. In autumn the tree carries small dark fruits on long stalks that taste faintly of dates and that birds strip fast. It is the only hackberry on Turin's monumental register. The park it stands in opened in 1856 as the city's first public park, laid out in the French manner by the gardener Jean-Pierre Barillet-Deschamps, and everything else on this walk from here south is inside it.