Just as every museum has a most iconic and representative work of art, a botanical garden also usually has a specimen that stands for all the other floristic riches present.

The symbolic tree of the Botanical Garden of the University of Pavia is the Platano di Scopoli. It is one of the largest plants in Lombardy: it towers over the city from its height of 45 metres. According to scientific classification, it belongs to the widespread hybrid Platanus hispanica (or Platanus Acerifolia), also called London Plane.

The magnificent tree monument was planted in 1778 by one of the first directors of the botanical garden, the naturalist Giovanni Antonio Scopoli, on the occasion of the death of Carlo Linnaeus, the father of the classification of living organisms.

Cared for and monitored, with the same attention that one would pay to a famous work of art, the plane tree today enjoys excellent health and has reached, with its incredible trunk, a circumference of 10 metres (diameter of 320 cm). 

A green monument that is accessible to the public during the Botanical Garden opening hours.

(Ph: news_unipv.it)