Leaving my wife and daughter under a parasol on Bordighera’s beach, my teenage son and I set off in search of the largest Ficus macrophylla in western Europe. The tree, commonly known as the strangler fig, was planted in 1886 by Clarence Bicknell, British botanist, collector, lover of Esperanto and chaplain of Bordighera’s Anglican church.

Bicknell loved the hilly, pine-covered coast between Sanremo and the French Riviera, but ended up loathing his “tea-party, gossipy” British congregation, who had “no international spirit”. He abandoned the church and spent his time painting flowers, cataloguing archaeological artefacts and taking rubbings of the prehistoric rock carvings in the maritime Alps.