The Raoul Wallenberg Tree

Cardiff's memorial to a man who saved tens of thousands of lives is alive itself. It was planted in 1985 for Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat who spent the last months of 1944 in Budapest issuing protective passports and running safe houses that kept Hungarian Jews off the deportation trains. In January 1945 Soviet forces took him into custody. He was never seen again, and what happened to him has never been established. The tree stands in Alexandra Gardens in Cathays Park, the formal green rectangle at the centre of Cardiff's civic quarter, where the Welsh National War Memorial and a row of other monuments face each other across the grass. A plaque at its foot carries his name. Most of what is commemorated in that garden is carved; this is the one that has put on forty years of growth since it was dedicated. It is young by the standards of this map, and it is here for what it stands for rather than for its age. It is a tree of heaven, a fast-growing species from China with long leaves made of many paired leaflets. No source places it more precisely than the garden, but Alexandra Gardens is small enough that you will find a tree with a Wallenberg plaque without much hunting.