The Tulip Tree of the Palace Garden

It flowers in June and almost nobody notices, because the flowers are green and orange and they sit upright at the ends of branches twenty metres up. That is the thing worth knowing about a tulip tree. It is not named for its shape. It is named for the flower, which is a real tulip-shaped bloom about six centimetres across, pale green with an orange band at the base, and on a tree this size they are held so high that most people who walk past in flowering season see nothing at all. Bring something to look through, or wait until they drop. The leaf is the other giveaway and it works all summer: squared off at the tip, as though somebody cut the point off with scissors. There is no other tree in a Dutch garden with that leaf. It is an eastern North American species, in European gardens since the seventeenth century, and it was planted here in the same stretch as the copper beech beside it, between 1810 and 1820. In October it turns clear yellow, which on a tree this tall is the version of it most people actually see.