From the mountains of North Africa to the Piedmontese gardens: a journey into the world of the Atlas cedar

One of the features that characterizes the cedar of these mountains—and which made it a commonly grown tree in private gardens designed and built between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries—is its color, that glaucous bluish green, not unique though, as it is also found in other conifers such as cypress and fir. Several varieties are recognized, but the most widespread are the glauca and the weeping glauca.

The Atlas cedars, like the cedars of Lebanon, form themselves year after year by expanding, literally bursting their trunks and main branches from their center, almost as if they were suns rooted in the ground. Measuring them, once mature, is not easy at all: the trunks are multiple. The large cedar towering over the hill of Montalenghe is one of the biggest trees in Piedmont; it rivals in width the cedar of Perosa Canavese, an eleven-meter giant ten kilometers away, as well as the largest chestnut trees and giant sequoias in the region. At the base, it measures 13.40 m; at chest height, 10.80 m; but if the two lateral trunks—grown from the ground yet detached from the others—are included, the measurement reaches 12.20 meters.

Estimates on its age vary widely; some even suggest 600 or 700 years. Since botanical manuals and numerous publications state that the species was introduced in the seventeenth or eighteenth century, the longevity prospects of the largest specimens near castles or noble residences must be reduced. The cedar of Lebanon at Villa Montebello in Varese, another eleven-meter tree, is similar in size and was planted in 1849. The cedar of Perosa Canavese, according to local accounts, was planted in 1720, when the Perrone counts reportedly brought home a sapling of this characteristic conifer from a trip to Morocco; other sources suggest a later date, claiming the tree was planted in memory of General Ettore Perrone di San Martino, who fell at Novara in March 1849 while commanding the III Division of the Piedmontese Army against the Austrians. It is therefore not unreasonable to estimate its age between 200 and 250 years.