Bregenz protects a Japanese pagoda tree in Rieden-Vorkloster that is remarkable less for its age than for its shape: a crown 26 metres wide on a tree only 12.5 metres tall. Planted around 1950, it became a natural monument in July 2010 and stands beside a school on Johann-Jörg-Weg, seen from the street. Come in August, when the species opens its cream flowers and little else in town is in bloom.
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Japanese Pagoda Tree (Styphnolobium japonicum) · 75 years · Rieden-Vorkloster
This tree is twice as wide as it is tall. Its crown spreads 26 metres; the whole tree stands only 12.5 metres high.
It is a Japanese pagoda tree beside the schoolyard of the Hauptschule in Rieden-Vorkloster, and it is young for this map. It was planted around 1950, which makes it roughly 75 years old, and its trunk is 86 centimetres thick. It is not a veteran; what sets it apart is that spread. On 1 July 2010 the Bregenz town council declared it a natural monument, listed in the Vorarlberg register as ND-213. A newspaper report that year called it vital, with 11 to 25 percent leaf loss.
The species flowers late. In August, when almost nothing else around it is in bloom, a pagoda tree opens clusters of cream flowers, and a crown this wide has a great deal of room for them.
The last photograph we know of was taken in May 2016, in full leaf. We have found nothing more recent, so we cannot confirm how it is doing now. If you walk past, tell us.
See it from the street, Johann-Jörg-Weg, where the trunk stands at the edge behind a low hedge, with the school building behind it. The school grounds are not open to visitors, and from the pavement you see all of it anyway.
Photo: HanifeBiyikli (CC BY-SA 4.0)