The Sweet Osmanthus of the Winding Path

The national register credits this tree with six and a half metres of trunk. The regional one adds the detail that makes sense of it: that figure is every stem added together, not one trunk, because Osmanthus fragrans grows as a bundle rather than a column. It is ten metres tall, which is large for the species, and the register calls it a rarity in this climate. The reason to walk to it is the smell. For a few weeks in autumn a sweet osmanthus in flower puts out one of the strongest scents any hardy tree makes, apricot and ripe peach, carried well past the tree itself, and it comes from flowers so small you have to hunt for them: clusters of cream stars a few millimetres across, tucked into the leaf axils. In China, where the species comes from, those flowers are picked for tea, for wine and for sweets, and the city of Guilin takes its name from them. Graefer and the botanists who followed him were buying novelty from the far side of the world for a queen who wanted her garden to beat the other royal gardens of Europe. This is one of the few things they planted that a visitor notices without being told what it is.