The Paulownia of Škarniclova Park

Two sources describe the same paulownia and disagree by ninety years. One, tracing to a 2008 press mention, calls it roughly a hundred and fifty years old. The other, closer to the state register's own catalogue figures, gives sixty. Paulownia tomentosa is one of the fastest growing trees planted in Europe, capable of adding real girth in a single decade, which makes the younger number the more biologically plausible one, but that is this project's own reasoning rather than either source correcting the other, so both stand on the page rather than one being quietly dropped. What both agree on is the tree itself: twenty metres tall, a trunk just over three metres round, protected since 1996 for its cultural and aesthetic value. It grows in Park Škarniclova, a small neighbourhood green space that volunteers rebuilt in the 2020s, adding a new path between the dormitory it fronts and a footpath used by a nearby school. In May and June the tree carries upright spikes of lavender flowers before the leaves fill in, the one month it stops being background greenery for the block.