I walk through the landscape. Italy is such a big and amazing place to discover. We have a long history, a great artistic heritage from the Etrurian age, the Roman Empire, the Middle Ages local cultures and towns, the Renaissance masterpieces, etc.

When your average person thinks about Italy, the first things they think of are probably Leonardo da Vinci, Rome, Venice’ channels, Caravaggio, Michelangelo or Dante’s Commedia. Or even pizza. But Italy is also the European country with the largest number of arboreal species, more than 5000 species of plants, with a very wide biodiversity: from the sunny lands in the South to the high Alps in the North. Plains, lakes, rivers, high valleys, coasts and islands dot the landscape.

I write books about big trees in Italy. I also like to take pictures, and map out itineraries for tree seekers and tree huggers. The first step is to discover these big creatures. So I pass a lot of time walking, moving, climbing hills and mountains, crossing woods, measuring trunks and crowns, and photographing. The second step is describing, writing, trying to communicate the existence of these heritage trees. The third step: composing a book.

Sometimes I plan a book about different places and histories. Sometimes I arrange what I call, in Italian, a “taccuino”, a notebook, a “taccuino per cercatori di alberi”, a “notebook for tree seekers”. In this case I select a place, and depict the environment of a specific place as a botanic garden, a wood, or a region, or an itinerary.

I have published notebooks dedicated to the Hanbury Botanic Gardens in Ventimiglia (Liguria), about itineraries of the Moreton Bay Figs in the towns of Sanremo and Bordighera (Liguria), about the big trees in the region where I live (Piedmont, main city is Turin), about the woody heart of Tuscany, the Maremma or again about Sardinia where we have our oldest tree, an Oleaster of 4000 years old in Luras.

In Italy a tree seeker or hugger could find typical local trees such as Sweet Chestnuts (Castanea sativa), European beeches (Fagus sylvatica), a variety of weeping beech (Fagus sylvatica pendula), the red beech (Fagus sylvatica purpurea), Honeyberry or European nettle tree (Celtis australis) that we commonly call “spaccasassi,” Silver Firs (Abies alba), Norway Spruces (Picea abies), Holm Oaks (Quercus ilex) (especially in the South), Cork Oaks (Quercus suber) in Sicily and Sardinia, and much more. But we also have great trees from other parts of the worlds.

Italy's oldest trees:

• Olivastro di Luras - Oleaster (Olea europaea var. sylvatica or Olea oleaster), 4000 years old, Sardinia, Luras;
• Castagno dei cento cavallieri – Sweet Chestnut (Castanea sativa), between 2000 and 3000 years old, Sicily, Sant’Alfio, Etna Natural Park;
• Larici di Val d’Ultimo – Larch (Larix decidua), three trees, around 2200 years old, Trentino Alto Adige.

There are many huge trees in the city:

• In Turin you could go to the park of Tesoriera, where you could find a London Plane (Platanus acerifolia) of 660 cm of circumference of the girth, more than 160 years old.
• In Milan in the public park Indro Montanelli, there is the 300-year-old oak (Quercus robur)
• In Florence at a park called “Bobolino” our greatest California Incense-Cedar (Calocedrus decurrens) can be found.
• In Rome's Villa Borghese park you can walk around the eleven oriental planes (Platanus orientalis) planted around the year 1600
• In Palermo and Cagliari our great Australian trees can be found: the Moreton Bay Figs (Ficus macrophylla), planted back in 1845, are now very big and strong Green Monuments. From Australia we also have different species of Eucalyptus (camaldulensis, botryoides, globules) and Araucaria.

But our oldest and biggest trees are far from the city, they alive in valleys, in high woods, and in our main islands, Sardinia and Sicily. Alot of great oaks and chestnuts in the center of Italy – Emilia Romagna, Tuscany, Lazio, Marche, Abruzzo, Molise and Umbria. Great Specimens of Camphor Trees (Cinnamomum camphora) are around our lakes in the north of the country, as Lake Maggiore and Lake of Garda.

A great number of redwoods and giant sequoias are in my region, the Piedmont: I find trees of 150 years old, 45-50 meters tall, 9 and 10 meters of circumference of the girth. But the oldest one, a Sequoia sempervirens, is probably in Genoa, the main harbor in Liguria, at the Botanic Garden, planted in the year 1837.

Four pictures:

    1) Oleaster in Luras, Sardinia
    2) Sweet Chestnuts in Sant’Alfio, Sicily
    3) Moreton Bay Fig in Sanremo, Villa Ormond Park, Liguria
    4) Larch in Vallone del Praz, Pietraporzio, Piedmont

Website: www.homoradix.com

By Tiziano Fratus

Bio note: Tiziano Fratus (above) was born in the city of Bergamo in 1975. He’s a Root Man and a Tree Seeker. He has published books of poetry in Italy and elsewhere, the last collection being Poesie luterane (Lutheran Poems, 2011). His bestseller is titled Homo Radix, connected with an acclaimed photo exhibition. He draws itineraries for tree huggers in several regions.