Trees of Argentea

Mountain Maple
The Mountain Maple is a great tree that can reach the 30-40 m of height, with straight, cylindrical stalk, and wide foliage, formed of large branches that create a thick cover. Its greyish, characteristic bark has reddish shadings, is smooth to the juvenile stage, while in the adult specimens splinter in great irregular plates similar to those of the plane tree. It has simple, opposite, caducous 10-15 (20) cm. long and equally wide leaves.
In Italy you find it in the Alps and the Apennines until Calabria and in Sicily until altitudes of about 1900 m.
In the lower areas (Castanetum) it prefers the fresh and shadowy stations, in that higher (Fagetum) those warmest and sunned; on fertile, not acids, and fresh soils. The wood of the Mountain Maple is very precious for the production of fine furniture, of strips for floors, coverings of high value, etc. The leaves constitute an excellent fodder.

Bay
The bay is native of the Mediterranean and is an evergreen tree that can reach also the 20 m of height! Often it’s used as ornamental plants them to fence gardens and lands.
The Laurus term includes different species, but the most famous and appreciated is the nobilis. It’s an evergreen plant, belonging to the family of the Lauracee.
The trunk is erect, the bark is green. The ovate leaves are dark green, coriaceous, bright in the upper part and opaque in that lower. The flowers are small and yellow-green. The bay is a rustic plant, grows well in all soils and can be cultivated in whichever type of garden. Famous since the antiquity, the Greeks consecrated the bay to Apollo.
The thin and pervasive aroma reminded the prophetic abilities of this God and its priestesses. Of laurel were the crowns that assumed the head of the emperors and the Roman consuls, but also of the poets and the men of letters. The bay is used to season stewed meat, broth, marinade and soup, used in meat and fish dishes, but also to season some salami, drinks and cakes: excellent, for example, in the rice puddings.

Hornbeam
The Hornbeam can reach 25 meters of height. The foliage is dark green and very close.
The trunk is erect with a thin, smooth, dark grey bark.
The leaves are deciduous, ovate with the dentate margin, until 10 cm long.
The flowers are unisexual: the masculine in amentum, those feminine ones in ears.

Chestnut Tree
Castanea Sativa - family: Fagacee
The chestnut tree, like the beech, is characteristic of a climatic-forest area, called the chestnut grove, extended to all the Apennine, from the North to the Sicily. It’s particularly diffused in Liguria, Piemonte, Tuscany and Campania.
It’s a long-lived plant: it can live until two hundred years, catching up an height of approximately 25-30 meters and a diameter of 2 meters. The increase rings are very clear and have regular course. The weaving is rough, with fibre almost always straight or slightly deviated, above all near the nodes. The alburnum is subject to the attack of fungi and bugs, the heart wood is the particularly resistant and keeps well.
In the past it was used in order to realise the main and secondary warping of roofs and covers, for metal rings and supports for the laths of the pavilions, for flooring disguised as wood floors. For the great resistance to the humidity and the inclement weather it was used for the construction of inner and external frames, barrels and tools for agriculture, the sheep farming, the forestry. It’s useful for the piling: for the duration it’s important to burn the part that will have to stick in the soil, preventing therefore to the humidity to penetrate in fibres. Cut in thin stripes it was used in order to interlace hampers or panniers of different shape. It was employed also in cabinet work and the naval carpentry. The tannin, that was extracted from the chestnut tree, was used for tinctures or alkylic experiments.
The trees grown to high quotas last more in the time, probably because they have a slower increase, for the more rigid climate, and therefore they have more compact and resistant fibres. Instead in the low and humid zones the increase is faster and annual rings are more spaced, rendering the wood less compact.

Beech
The Beech is an European plant, present from southern Sweden to mounts of the Sicily and Great Britain to Southeaster Russia. It’s a tree with conical-globular foliage, with tendency to expand and to create a dense and thick vegetation. It reaches 20-30 meters of height. The trunk is erect; the thin bark appears characteristically smooth, bright and light grey. The alternate, ovate-elliptic leaves, are 10-15 cm long, lightly repand, with straight and parallels secondary nerves; the leaves have a short petiole and they are at the beginning reddened, then on the upper part dark green, and clearer below. The inflorescence are unisexual: those masculine in pendants glomerule, equipped of a long peduncle, those erected feminine consisting of 1-2 flowers encircled from 4 wide upper brattee and numerous linear below brattee.

Ash Tree
The Ash Tree is from the 15 to the 40 m high, with lengthened foliage, in the form of cupola. The thick foliage has given the name to the Ash tree, from the Greek "frasso". The trunk is often erect and slender until the top. The bark is grey-greenish, smooth with some thin furrow in the young plants, and becomes more and more rugged and cracked with the age. Some branches are turned highward, others hangs down. They are rather thin and confer to the foliage a rounded shape. In the young, smooth branches, there are big black and opaque buds. The Ash tree catches up the reproductive age to approximately 25 years, grows enough quickly, except in the first years and can catch up the 300 years of life.

Ilex
Quercus ilex - family: fagaceae
The ilex is original of all the area of the Ligurian Apennine, found in the lauretum and the fagetum. It’s very diffused above all in the coastal zones but also in those inner ones, shape of forest and isolated plant.
It has a rounded and evergreen foliage, inserted rather low as regard as the stalk, it’s high until 30 meters and with a diameter of one and a half meter. The leaves, alternatively dentate (those young ones), or to smooth and turned margin (those oldest ones), are of dark green colour. The bark is ash grey. The heart wood is tawny, sometimes with reddish shade. The increase rings are not so evident. The weaving varies from medium to thin, the fibre is generally twisted. The duration is high.
It was used in the building industry for the structure of roofs and ceilings, floors and in order to realise several tools. It also supplies a fair quantity of tannin. The operations of planing and cleaning, are executed easily.

Kernel
In Italy the kernel is diffused in all the regions, from the plain until 1300 m of altitude. Usually it does not exceed 5-6 m. Its foliage is thick, wide, irregular with the diameter that reaches the 4 m.
The stalk is thin and slender. The young branches are covered of short hairs. The bark is of brown -grey colour, prematurely smooth, with longitudinal ploughing and scattered clear lenticels.
The leaves are short-lived, alternate and with a long petiole. The upper page of the leaf is green and not hairy; the lower page is clearer with evident keels.
The flowers, reunited in unisexual inflorescence, develop before the leaves. The male amentum are reunited in groups of 2-4 to the extremity or to the axil of the leaves of branches of the previous year, the male flowers are unprovided of the covering and have four stamen. The fruit is the hazelnut.

Olive Tree

The olive tree is a long-lived plant that can easily catch up some hundreds of years: it has this characteristic because succeeds to regenerate completely or in good part the apparatus, both the trunk and branches, and the roots, if damaged. The olive tree is an evergreen plant, that is its vegetative phase is almost continuous during all the year, with a slight decrease in the winter period.
The flowers are hermaphrodite, small, white and devoid of scent, constituted from calyx and corolla. The flowers are grouped and formed from mixed buds, present on branches of the previous or current year. The pollination is obtained thanks to the pollen transport of the wind and not through yucca moth (entomophilous pollination).
The leaves are of lanceolate shape and coriaceous. They are of dark green colour and smooth on the upper page while they present hairs on the lower page that confer the typical silver colour and preserve them from the excessive transpiration during the warm Mediterranean summers.
The fruit, the olive, is the only fruit from which you can extract an oil (the other oils are extracted with chemical or physical procedures from seeds). The peel varies its colour from the green to the violaceous, depending on the several cultivation. The pulp is succulent and contains 25-30 % of oil, collected to the inside of its cells disguised as small drops. The seed is contained in a wood, ovoid, rough and brown endocarp.
The trunk is twisted, the bark is grey and smooth, but tends to crumble with the age; the wood is of thin weaving, of yellow-tawny colour, very smelling (of oil), hard and used for the manufacture of valuable furniture in solid wood.
At present Italy occupies the second place among the oil producers, preceded by Spain. Its olive growing is distributed on approximately two million hectares, little less of the half is in main cultivation, the remaining in secondary cultivation. A relatively slight part of the annual product is consumed like cooking oil, while a big percentage is destined to the pressing.

Elm Tree
The Elm tree is an original plant of centre-southern Europe and the Caucasian region. In Italy the elm is frequent in every zone until the 1,000 meters. It can reach the 30 meters of height; the foliage is light and elegant.
The Trunk is straight and has many branches. The opaque and rough bark has a colour that varies from the grey to the tawny and is cracked in small plates and furrowed longitudinally.
The leaves are deciduous, simple, with a pointed tip.
The hermaphrodite flowers are reunited in red colour groups. The fruits, reunited in groups, mature in summer.

Alder
Alnus glutinosa = black Alder; Incana Alnus = white Alder - family: Bertulaceae
The Alder is diffused in all the Ligurian territory, along the rivers, the torrents and the humid zones; both the species are characteristic of the zones of the beechwood and the chestnut grove, the black alder is the more common species.
Both the species have a foliage to conical shape, with regular ramifications. The black alder catches up 20-25 meters of height and a diameter of 50-60 centimetres. Its bark is rough, of light brown colour; the rounded leaves have a stretch mark to the apex. The white alder reaches nearly the 10-20 meters and the diameter catches up the 20 centimetres. The bark is grey and smooth, the leaves are acuminated, with small teeth inserted in the larger teeth. The wood is of red-orange colour, and after the drying it becomes reddish. The increase rings, generally regular, are not so visible with the naked eye. The duration is limited in the open or in humid environments, but is remarkable when the wood is always immersed in the water.
The alder is adapted for constructions on pilework and similar: it is documented in the structure of the Ponte Reale of Genoa, dated back to the XVI century. It’s easy to saw, to plane and to clean.

Orniello
The Orniello is a plant of the family of the Ashes that lives in all the peninsula, from the pre-alpine zone to the northern and central Apennine, in Sicily and Sardinia. Usually it does not exceed the 10 m of height and has thick and luxuriant fronds. The caducous leaves are dentate and are formed from 5-9 small leaves. The flowers are white-cream, sweetly smelling and take in showy spike inflorescence, situated to the extremity of branches. The fruits are samara with a wing of 2-3 cm that becomes tawny and bright to maturity.
The Orniello produces the so-called "manna", a yellowish rubber that transudes from the leaves and the scars of the bark and that, with the air, thickens in grains or in shapes similar to stalactites. The manna is used from the confectionery industry and also transformed in syrup lightly laxative.

Stone Pine (Pinus pinea)
Original of Spain, the stone pine lives mostly in the marine zones and more sporadically in the hinterland. It can catch up the 20-25 meters of height, the foliage is to umbrella shape, the leaves are needles very pointed to groups of two, from the 12 to the 20 cm long. The flowering happens from May to June and in the autumn of the same year or the following the pinecones are born, formed from many chips that opening, free the seeds: the pine kernels. The trunk is erected and branched. The wood is reddish and tinged with dark, it is light and not resistant.
It’s a plant very rare and so not very used in the constructions.

Cluster Pine
pinaster, Pinus Silvestris
Historically present in the shores of Viareggio, near Suvero (La Spezia), in Corsica, generally in the Ligurian Apennine. It’s diffused in the hill and the zones of low mountain on the Tyrrhenian side. It’s present in the lauretum and the castanetum, but it is also imported from France.
The maximum height is of 35 meters, with a diameter of one meter. It can reach 200 years of age. The foliage has unmistakable characteristics, it is concentrated in the high part of the stalk and is ovaled in width. Sometimes it can take the form of a flag, owing to the wind. The needles are collected in double bunch, approximately 17 centimetres long. The bud is sturdy, with fringing squama; the tawny-reddish bark is characterised from plate cracking. It presents a large, whitish colour alburnum, and a not very developed, tawny-reddish heart wood. The increase rings have a regular course. The weaving is medium or rough, the fibre is generally straight. The duration is short.
It’s used for the naval carpentry, for ex. planking of small boats and above all in the cabinet work, for the structures of several furniture. It’s also used sometimes for the structure of ceilings and roofs, with the larch, and for some parts of buildings, like porches, arch or architrave, "matchboarding", for coverings. The planing and the cleaning do not present problems; however it often has compression problems that prejudice the employment in carpenter's shop. The duration is better if the tree is grown in dry areas and therefore if the increase rings are close.

Locust
Robinia pseudoacacia - family: Leguminosae papilionaceae
The locust is original of North America, the name derives from the French botanist Jean Robin, who introduced it in France at the beginning of the XVII century. Owing to the Napoleonic domination, it knew an immense spread also in Italy.
The wood is differentiated, with white-yellowish alburnum and bronze heart wood. The increase rings are evident, they present a variable width and a regular course. The weaving is medium and the fibre is straight.
It’s an optimal wood, made in order to last in the time, but has the tendency to the warping if it isn’t seasoned and bedded horizontally. In the past it was used for piles, fences, pilings, wheels for wagons, agricultural piles, gears. Particularly it was used for the construction of the rows of vines: the big and without knags trunk were opened in half with splitters and then still in half and so on, in order to have the more compact part near the medulla at one’s disposal.

Roverella
The Roverella belongs to the Fagacee Family, its stalk can reach the 20 m of height. Its foliage is globular and hemispheric in the adult exemplary. The winding trunk has dark -grey bark, cracked in small rough plates. The foliage is deciduous, but the dried leaves persist on the tree during the winter. Flowers: unisexual inflorescence; those male ones in hanging amentum 5 cm long approximately, green-yellowish colour; those feminine are solitary; the flowering is from April to May. Fruits: oval acorns of 2 cm long, with a cupule that covers them until the half. The name indicates the smaller size of the plant as regard as the Durmast. The roverella is a tree of third largeness (20 m) that can also exceed 2 m of diameter. It’s also fairly long-lived, but generally less than the bay-oak and the Durmast. The spread area extends on southern Europe and the Anatolia. In Italy it is much more diffused than the Durmast, it adapts itself to calcareous, clayey, arid, rocky grounds and it is fit for colonizing denuded environments. The wood is an optimal fuel, heavier than that one of the Durmast, it tends to embark. Being more difficult to work that the Durmast, it was used in the past for railway sleepers, today it’s still used only for girders and shipbuilding.
The acorns of the sweet varieties are used, by toasting, in order to produce a coffee surrogate.

Rowan Tree
The leaves of the rowan tree and the sorb are alternate, imparipinnate leaves, composed from a variable number of sessile leaflets. The mountain sorb presents wonderful oval leaves of variable dimensions, but always marked from the different coloration of the two faces: dark that upper, silver that below. The Rowan tree lives in the mountain, above the 600 meters, and can reach the 2000 meters of altitude. It is often found in mixed forests of beeches, firs, ashes. You can find it in the edges of the forest, where it can enjoy an optimal exposure to the light and so it leaves the shrubby aspect and develops in a branched tree and often with a bit untidy aspect, for the irregular foliage, but always of great impression. The harvesting of the berries of the Rowan tree must happen when these have already an intense coloration and are already a good degree of ripening. With a regular seasonal course state, the harvesting will be carried out in October. The ripening must happen on the plant and it doesn’t require time of wait or pause on the straw like for the others sorbs.