The Leaning Catalpa of the Hortus

This catalpa is kept out of the canal by cables tied to another tree on this list. It stands right on the edge of the singel behind the glasshouse, and at some point it leaned far enough that it was going to end up in the water. The answer was anchors, run across to the zelkova in the Japanese garden, and that arrangement is what still holds it upright. Two monumental trees, one carrying the other. The register dates it to 1820, inside a recorded band of 1820 to 1830, and counts it among the five thickest catalpas in the Netherlands. The catalpas planted across Europe came mostly from the American south and arrived in the 18th century for exactly the reason people still plant them: outsized heart-shaped leaves that come late and drop early, upright trusses of white flowers marked purple and yellow in the throat, then long thin seed pods that hang on all winter like forgotten string. It is a soft-wooded, brittle tree, never built for two centuries of Dutch wind on an exposed bank, which makes the cabling less an indignity than the reason there is still anything here to look at. Walk behind the glasshouse and follow the line of the water until you find the one that is not standing straight.