Just a few hundred metres from the Varese railway stations and the city centre is the lush Villa Augusta Park, a small green jewel where, among majestic cedars and purple beeches, a truly unique plant appears: the large cork oak with its incredible shapes.

In about a century of living in the gardens, its trunk and branches have slanted towards the light, giving it a truly impressive appearance and making it the park's true arboreal treasure.

Cork oaks are normally subject to periodic deprivation of bark that limits their growth, but in this case the tree has always played a purely aesthetic role and has thus been able to reach an incredible size for the species, even more so if one considers the less than 'Mediterranean' climate of Varese.

With a trunk more than 3 metres in circumference (95 cm in diameter) and a height of 14 metres, it is one of the most important cork oaks in northern Italy and is also impressive for the thickness of its bark.

(Ph: Luca Pernechele)