The Katsura of the TU Schaugärten

For two weeks in October the ground under this tree smells of gingerbread. Drying katsura leaves give off maltol, the same compound that comes out of a hot oven, which is why German named the species Kuchenbaum and Lebkuchenbaum, cake tree and gingerbread tree. You smell it before you work out where it is coming from. It is probably the largest katsura in Berlin. That is not our measurement but the judgement of Professor Norbert Kuehn, who heads the TU Berlin department that maintains this garden and who opens his own account of the place by naming this tree first. Berlin had already protected it on 2 March 1993 as natural monument 6-78/B, the Japanischer Kuchenbaum. The species came out of Japan and China into European gardens in the later nineteenth century, arriving in time for a Prussian teaching institute to want one. From 1903 to 1966 these grounds were the Koenigliche Gaertnerlehranstalt, the state school for gardeners, and every rarity here was bought to be studied rather than admired. Katsuras usually rise as several stems from low down instead of one trunk, and the round heart-shaped leaves come out bronze-pink in April, go blue-green by June and finish apricot. No age has ever been published for it, and the register records no girth.