ROME - O Christmas tree, O Christmas tree, how pitifully bare are your branches! Romans on Wednesday were mourning the untimely death of the Eternal City's tree, affectionately nicknamed 'Baldy'. With a week still to go until Dec. 25, the tree in the Italian capital's main square of Piazza Venezia has become such a laughing stock that it led the city's mayor to launch an investigation into what prompted Baldy's premature demise. Rome's tree is dry, dead on arrival. It's a metaphor for the state of the capital, one local wrote on Twitter, while another wondered: What time does the funeral start? According to Italian newspaper Il Messaggero, a preliminary inquiry found that the tree was not properly covered during transport from the Dolomites in northern Italy, where it had been grown. A wide range of Romans - including environmentalists and professional gardeners - have opined that a tree of a more robust variety also would have survived for longer before starting to shed. Poor Baldy is a Norway spruce, while the European silver fir would have been a much safer bet for a tree, these self-professed Christmas tree experts said. Many have compared the fir tree agony - which has cost the city some 48,000 euros ($57,000) - to the governing Five Star Movement (M5S), which won the mayorship in 2016 but has struggled with a transport and rubbish crisis. Il Messaggero declared it a national embarrassment, saying that in Russia, they've dubbed our dying tree a 'toilet brush'. - AFP