Silva Ciminia

The Silva Ciminia, the Ciminian Forest, was the unbroken primeval forest that separated Ancient Rome from Etruria. According to the Roman historian Livy it was, in the 4th century BCE, a feared, pathless wilderness in which few dared tread. The Ciminian Forest received its name from the Monti Cimini, which are still a densely wooded range of volcanic hills northwest of Rome. They form the part of the forerange of the Apennine main range that faces towards the Tyrrhenian Sea.

In the south, the Silva Ciminia stretched from Lake Bracciano to the edges of the flat plain of the Roman Campagna, in the lower Tiber valley. Stretches of cleared fields round the major Etruscan settlements formed the Ager Veientanus that supported Veii, the Ager Faliscus of the Falisci, and the Ager Capenas of Capena. In the heart of the Ciminian woodlands lay the Lake of Ciminus (Lago di Vico). In the northwest, they reached as far as Tarquinia.

The forest was predominantly formed by oak and beech, though second growth in the lower slopes has favoured the aggressively re-seeding Spanish chestnut. A relict stand of beech, rare in Central Italy, remains on the upper slopes of Monte Cimino. Sub-fossil pollen analyses from cores of stratified sediment taken in the region's crater lakes typically reveal a pollen sequence characteristic of tundra lying over an all-but-sterile wind-blown loess sand; this in turn was followed by grassland, with pollen of water-lilies and pondweeds blown from glacial meltwater lakes. The earliest Holocene forest was fir, followed by mixed pine and oak, with a climax forest of beech and oak, including Quercus ilex.

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