The Judas Tree of Placa Joanic

This tree is twice as wide as it is tall. Five metres of height, a crown ten metres across and a trunk 1.8 metres around, the proportions of something that decided early to spread rather than climb. It is a Judas tree, and the Catalan name on the city register, arbre de l'amor, is a good deal kinder than the English one. The English name comes from the story that Judas hanged himself from a Cercis and its white flowers turned red with shame; the likelier explanation is that arbre de Judee, tree of Judea, got misheard somewhere along the way, Judea being a place it genuinely grows wild. What the tree does in April accounts for both names. The flowers break straight out of the bark, off the old wood of the branches and the trunk itself, before a single leaf has opened, so the whole frame of the tree turns magenta for a fortnight and then greens over as if nothing happened. This one was planted in 1956 on Placa de Joanic and catalogued in 1996. It stands about 330 metres from the holm oak on Carrer de l'Encarnacio, the oldest measured tree in Barcelona, which makes the two of them a short and unusually good walk through the middle of Gracia.