The Japanese Pagoda Tree of Rolighedsvej

The Japanese pagoda tree is not Japanese. Styphnolobium japonicum comes from China and was named from cultivated trees in Japan, where Europeans first saw it, which is the sort of accident that sticks for three centuries. This one stands on a street corner in Frederiksberg, immediately east of Sankt Thomas Kirke where Rolighedsvej meets L.I. Brandes Allé, 3.15 metres round and 12 metres tall. It has had a hard time of it. A few years before the 2022 survey somebody cut it back heavily, and it carries large bark wounds on its south and east sides over the lowest two metres of trunk. The register recorded it alive. It is worth knowing what the species does in late summer, because almost nothing else does it. The pagoda tree flowers in August and September, cream-coloured and in loose sprays, at the point in the year when every other flowering tree in the city has long finished. Whether this pruned and wounded specimen still puts on a full show is not something any source records. No source but the register carries this tree at all. If you pass it and can say how the crown is doing, that would be worth more to us than another measurement.