The Catalpa of the Van Abbemuseum

Nobody can say whether this catalpa or the museum beside it came first. The national tree register puts its planting between 1900 and 1910. Eindhoven's own tree database, refreshed this month, records 1930. Both are official, both list the tree as monumental, and the gap between them is a generation. It matters here, because the Van Abbemuseum went up in 1936, built by A.J. Kropholler for the cigar manufacturer Henri van Abbe to hold his collection. On the register's dating the tree was already thirty years old and watched the building arrive on its doorstep. On the city's dating it went in six years before the builders did. We have not picked a winner between the two. What is not in dispute: this is a southern catalpa of fifteen to eighteen metres, on the public green strip between the museum and the Dommel, and it is not alone. Four more catalpas stand within thirty five metres, all of them carrying the same monumental rating in the city's records. Catalpa comes from the southeastern United States, and it keeps American hours: it is one of the last trees in a Dutch park to come into leaf, so in April this corner still looks bare while everything around it has gone green. By July the crown is full of white flowers marked in yellow and purple. If you know when these were planted, tell us.