The Palm of San Servolo

Step off the boat at San Servolo and a palm is the first thing to meet you. The Italian garden heritage association describes it in exactly those terms, a palm that welcomes visitors as soon as they disembark, and the national register's point for this tree sits by the landing. It stands 10.5 metres tall with a trunk 188 centimetres around, and it is counted among the oldest things growing on the island. Its name contradicts itself, and the contradiction is in the official record. The register calls it palma delle Canarie, the Canary palm, the tree anyone would recognise from a seafront promenade. In the same entry it gives the scientific name Phoenix theophrasti, which is a different plant: the Cretan date palm, which survives in the wild in a few dozen ravines and beaches on Crete and the Turkish coast and nowhere near the Canaries. Either Venice has an unusual specimen on its hands or someone wrote a familiar Italian name beside the wrong Latin. We have left it as the state records it rather than quietly picking a side, and the tree itself will not settle the argument for you. The island spent generations as Venice's asylum, and the museum of that history is still open on its own ticket. The park around it costs nothing. The olive of San Servolo stands 184 metres away, which puts two old trees within a short walk of the same jetty.