The Yellow Bean Tree of Sydney Gardens

According to the Sydney Gardens tree trail, no yellow bean tree in Britain or Ireland grows taller than this one. The trail calls it a Champion Tree, recorded on the Tree Register of the British Isles as the tallest of its kind, at 21 metres with a trunk 2.75 metres round. We have the claim from the trail rather than from the register itself, so read it as the gardens' own record. Catalpa ovata comes from China, where its wood has a second life. The trail notes that it is the timber used for the soundboard of the guqin, the Chinese zither. In Bath the tree does a quieter job. It frames the Temple of Minerva, a replica temple moved into the gardens in 1911, standing on the lawn directly in front of it on the main promenade. For most of the year it is simply a broad-leaved tree on a lawn. In July and August it changes character, covering itself in upright sprays of creamy white trumpet flowers, and afterwards hangs with the long thin pods that gave it its English name. Nobody has published a planting date, so its age is an open question. If you know when the gardens' catalpa went in, tell us. Across the promenade stands a coast redwood with a thicker trunk, 2.95 metres round. The catalpa is still the taller of the two, by two metres.