There are very few hopes of a recovery of the millenary olive tree - one of the longest-lived in Sardinia - of “Sa Tanca Manna” in Cuglieri, destroyed by the violent fires that hit the Oristano last July.
The scaffolding and the sheets protecting the tree were dismantled by the volunteers of the Montiferru Association. Immediately after the fire, all the treatments and precautions necessary to give a life expectancy had been activated: mulching the surrounding soils, the preparation of an irrigation system, the covering of the trunks to reduce damage deriving from the sun's rays and the administration of left-handed amino acids that could have stimulated the emission of suckers, so as to favor a recovery of the stump.
Unfortunately, however, no vegetative recovery was seen: "It is clearly conceivable that the stump hit by the stake, with the fire that continued to spread underground for two days in the radical systems, was radically compromised" said Gianluigi Bacchetta, director of the Botanical Garden of Cagliari and professor of the University of Cagliari.
There remains a faint possibility that the more peripheral root system could have been saved. If it were true in spring we could see a vegetative restart, but it is - explains Bacchetta - an “extremely remote” possibility.
But if mother nature does not revive the historic Montiferru plant, we can try technology and scientific research: “As a Bank of the Germplasm of Sardinia - continued Bacchetta - in the past we collected the seeds of the patriarch. Now we are preparing experimental tests to multiply and thus obtain the daughter seedlings of the monumental wild olive ”.
(Unioneonline / L)