The Peruvian Pepper Tree of the Vil.la Amelia Gardens

The pink peppercorns in an expensive pepper grinder are not pepper, and this is the tree they come from. Schinus molle sits in the cashew family, unrelated to black pepper, and its hanging clusters of pink berries were the substitute that ended up named after the real thing. This one was planted around 1923 and catalogued by Barcelona in 1993, standing 12 metres tall with a trunk 2.7 metres round. Be clear about what is certain here. The city's own catalogue and a published description of the garden both confirm the species and the tree, but the planting year rests on the register alone, with nothing independent to check it against, so 103 years is the register's figure rather than a corroborated one. It is the softest tree in the Vil.la Amelia gardens. Peruvian pepper hangs its foliage in fine weeping sprays that move in any wind at all, a completely different physics from the planes and pines around it, and the berry clusters go dusty pink in autumn and hang on into winter. The species came to Spain from the Andes with the colonial trade in the 16th century, which makes it one more foreigner in a garden a banker built for his wife and the city later opened to everybody.