The Japanese Pagoda Tree of Carrer de la Guardia Urbana

The Japanese pagoda tree is not from Japan. Styphnolobium japonicum is native to China, planted for centuries around Buddhist and Taoist temples there, and reached Europe under a name that stuck long after botanists sorted out the mistake. Barcelona's specimen on Carrer de la Guardia Urbana, a short walk from Montjuic's Greek Theatre, is 2.3 metres round and 20 metres tall, added to the city's catalogue of trees of local interest in 2024. Its age is officially listed as under study, which is honest rather than evasive: the species can live for centuries in the right conditions, but nobody has aged this individual specimen, by ring count or by any other method. What earned it protection was size alone. The tree flowers in late summer, cream white clusters that are one of the few genuine bursts of colour on Barcelona's streets in August, when most of the city's flowering trees have already finished for the year. It stands on an ordinary residential street in Poble-sec, no garden, no gate, nothing to mark it beyond the tree itself.