THE OLDEST TREE IN EUROPE that has been scientifically dated to an accurate standard is a 1,230-year-old craggy pine in a popular national park in southern Italy. While an olive tree in a remote pocket of Sardinia has yet to be measured accurately enough for the claim of “oldest,” it is likely over three times as old.

Standing 14 meters tall with a trunk that measures 20 meters in circumference, the Patriarca Verde, or “Green Patriarch,” is estimated to be 3,800 years old, making it not only one of the oldest trees in Europe, but in the world as well. Locals call it S’Ozzastru, which in Sardo (Sardinian dialect) translates to “the wisdom of old age.”