The Catalpa on the City Wall

It is growing on a defensive earthwork built to keep the duke of Gelre out. Around 1388 Amersfoort put up a second city wall, and put most of the effort into the northeast, because that was the side the trouble was expected from. The wall is largely gone. The bank it stood on is not, and the Plantsoen Oost is what the city made of the remains: a narrow park along the old rampart, planted with big trees whose roots are in six centuries of packed defensive earth. The catalpa is behind Binnen de Veste 41 and the register singles it out for its flowering, which is fair. Catalpa flowers in late June and early July, weeks after everything else has finished, in upright panicles of white bells with yellow and purple markings inside the throat, and on a mature tree there are hundreds of them at once. Then it produces the beans. Slender pods up to forty centimetres long hang all winter on the bare tree, which is where the name Indian bean tree comes from, and why this is worth a look in January as well. Huge heart-shaped leaves, and it comes into leaf later than anything else in the park.