I cam across this nice blog on the Chestnut Tree of a Hundred Horses today and thought it might be of interst to other ENTS Members.
Italian version: http://ilquaderno.wordpress.com/2010/11 ... o-cavalli/
Google Translation: http://translate.google.com/translate?j ... cavalli%2F
- Castagno_dei_Cento_Cavalli.jpg (49.44 KiB) Viewed 2579 times
From Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chestnut_T ... red_Horses
.The Chestnut Tree of One Hundred Horses (Italian: Castagno dei Cento Cavalli; Sicilian: Castagnu dê Centu Cavaddi) is the largest and oldest known chestnut tree in the world. Located on Linguaglossa road in Sant'Alfio, on the eastern slope of Mount Etna in Sicily — only 8 km (5 miles) from the mountain's crater — it is generally believed to be 2,000 to 4,000 years old (4,000 according to the botanist Bruno Peyronel from Turin).It is a Sweet Chestnut (Castanea sativa, family Fagaceae). Guinness World Records has listed it for the record of "Greatest Tree Girth Ever", noting that it had a circumference of 57.9 m (190 ft) when it was measured in 1780. Above-ground the tree has since split into multiple large trunks, but below-ground these trunks still share the same roots.The tree's name originated from a legend in which a queen of Aragon and her company of one hundred knights, during a trip to Mount Etna, were caught in a severe thunderstorm. The entire company is said to have taken shelter under the tree.
