Castagno dei cento cavalli - Jean-Pierre Houël

PSM V03 D337 Great chestnut of mount aetna

The Hundred-Horse Chestnut ( it, Castagno dei Cento Cavalli; scn, Castagnu dî Centu Cavaddi) is the largest and oldest known

chestnut The chestnuts are the deciduous trees and shrubs in the genus ''Castanea'', in the beech family Fagaceae. They are native to temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere. The name also refers to the edible nuts they produce. The unrelat ...

tree in the world. Located on Linguaglossa road in Sant'Alfio, on the eastern slope of

Mount Etna Mount Etna, or simply Etna ( it, Etna or ; scn, Muncibbeḍḍu or ; la, Aetna; grc, Αἴτνα and ), is an active stratovolcano on the east coast of Sicily, Italy, in the Metropolitan City of Catania, between the cities of Messina a ...

in Sicily. — only from the volcano's crater — it is generally believed to be 2,000 to 4,000 years old (4,000 according to botanist Bruno Peyronel from Turin). It is a sweet chestnut (''Castanea sativa'', family

Fagaceae The Fagaceae are a family of flowering plants that includes beeches, chestnuts and oaks, and comprises eight genera with about 927 species. Fagaceae in temperate regions are mostly deciduous, whereas in the tropics, many species occur as evergre ...

). '' 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 Aragon ( , ; Spanish and an, Aragón ; ca, Aragó ) is an autonomous community in Spain, coextensive with the medieval Kingdom of Aragon. In northeastern Spain, the Aragonese autonomous community comprises three provinces (from north to sou ...

and her company of 100 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. The Chestnut tree of Mount Etna
detailed account of the tree, its state and its surroundings, written by Wm. Rushton on June 29, 1871.

History

The tree is located in the wood of Carpineto, on the eastern slope of the Etna volcano, near zone D of the Etna park. Several authors of botany agree on its age but not on its age: it would have been between two and four thousand years and, according to the thesis of the Turin botanist Bruno Peyronel, it could be the oldest tree in Europe and the largest in Italy (1982). The first historical information on the Chestnut of the Hundred Horses is documented as early as the sixteenth century. In 1611 Antonio Filoteo spoke of it, while in 1636, in "Il Mongibello", Pietro Carrera majestically described the trunk and the tree "... capable of accommodating thirty horses inside". On 21 August 1745, a first act was issued by the "Court of the Order of the Royal Heritage of Sicily", with which the Chestnut of the Hundred Horses and the nearby Chestnut Nave were institutionally protected. This document is configured, by virtue of the historical period (late eighteenth century), among the first acts - if not the first ever - of environmental protection produced in Sicily.

Literary allusions

The tree and its legend have become the subject of various songs and poems, including the following

Sicilian-language Sicilian ( scn, sicilianu, link=no, ; it, siciliano) is a Romance language that is spoken on the island of Sicily and its satellite islands. A variant, ''Calabro-Sicilian'', is spoken in southern Calabria, where it is called Southern Calabro n ...

description by

Catanese Catanese is an Italian surname, meaning literally "Catanian", "from the city of Catania" or "from the province of Catania" (Catania is the capital of the Province of Catania, and is the second-largest city in Sicily and the tenth in Italy). Notabl ...

poet

Giuseppe Borrello Giuseppe Borrello (1820–1894) was an Italian poet, who wrote mainly in Sicilian, and wasa an Italian patriot. Borrello was born and died in Catania. In 1837, at a time when Catania was experiencing a cholera epidemic, he was granted specia ...

(1820–1894): Another poet from

Catania Catania (, , Sicilian and ) is the second largest municipality in Sicily, after Palermo. Despite its reputation as the second city of the island, Catania is the largest Sicilian conurbation, among the largest in Italy, as evidenced also by ...

in Sicily, Giuseppe Villaroel (1889–1965), described the tree in the following

sonnet A sonnet is a poetic form that originated in the poetry composed at the Court of the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II in the Sicilian city of Palermo. The 13th-century poet and notary Giacomo da Lentini is credited with the sonnet's invention, ...

(written in Italian): The 2018 novel ''

The Overstory ''The Overstory'' is a novel by Richard Powers published in 2018 by W. W. Norton & Company. It is Powers' twelfth novel. The book is about nine Americans whose unique life experiences with trees bring them together to address the destruction of ...

'' by American writer Richard Powers includes the line that: "Seven hundred years before, a chestnut in Sicily two hundred feet around sheltered a Spanish queen and her hundred mounted knights from a raging storm."

References

External links

* {{Sicily Castanea Flora of Sicily Individual trees in Italy Italian folklore Tourist attractions in Sicily Oldest trees

History

Literary allusions

See also

References

External links