The Silk Tree of the Ciutadella

A silk tree in a temperate climate is not built to last much past forty. Barcelona's specimen in Parc de la Ciutadella has been flowering every July since around 1896, well over a century past its species' usual expiry date. Albizia julibrissin earns its keep fast: fern-like leaves that fold shut like a hand closing at dusk, and pink, thread-like blooms shaped like a powder puff, built for a few decades of showing off before the tree gives out. This one never got that memo. Repeated infections have hollowed out its central trunk over the decades, a fact the city's own tree register states plainly rather than hides, and the crown above keeps flowering regardless every summer. It went into the ground around the years Barcelona's Natural Sciences Society ran its collections out of the museums nearby, when the park doubled as an open-air showcase for botanical curiosities brought back from around the world. About 1,100 of the same species now grow across Barcelona's streets and gardens, mostly planted as short-lived ornamentals expected to be swapped out within a generation. The Ciutadella specimen, catalogued as a Tree of Local Interest in 1996, has spent thirty years since making that paperwork look premature.