The Honey Locust of Salviatino

Florence has two trees popularly linked to Judas, and this is the one people picture wrong. The tree usually called Albero di Giuda in Italian is Cercis siliquastrum, the small pink flowered species tied to the legend that Judas hanged himself from one; this is Spino di Giuda, a completely different tree, honey locust, native to North America and named instead for its genuinely vicious thorns, some once over ten centimetres long, that grew along its trunk and branches before cultivated varieties bred them softer. Florence's specimen, standing alone at a residential intersection in Salviatino on the city's northeastern edge, has never been bred for anything. Its trunk has thickened to five and a half metres around, among the largest recorded for the species anywhere, and Italy's own monumental tree registry gives it national level significance, a rating few other Florentine trees share. No planting record survives, which is common for a tree standing on what was once open agricultural land before Salviatino urbanised around it. It offers little shade in winter and no flowers to speak of, and most residents of the surrounding apartment blocks likely have no idea their street corner holds a genuine botanical record holder.