The Sophora of the Parador Garden

Sophora japonica flowers late enough in the year to be useful: most ornamental trees in Granada's gardens finish blooming well before the height of summer, but this species holds its show for July and August, when its branches fill with hanging clusters of small white flowers, a genuine rarity in a Mediterranean garden calendar otherwise built around spring. Despite the name, the species is native to China rather than Japan, spread west along trade routes centuries before European botanists sorted out its origin, and this specimen has stood in the garden of what is now the Parador de Granada for close to two centuries, part of the same former Franciscan convent grounds that also hold the Parador's two flanking cypresses. Sharing a garden with cypresses planted for structure and pines for height, this sophora earns its place on scale and unusual timing alone, one of relatively few large deciduous flowering trees in a garden otherwise built around evergreens.