The Persian Ironwoods that Named Themselves

Nurseries across Europe sell a Persian ironwood called Parrotia persica 'Het Plantsoen'. It is named after this park, and these are the trees it is named after. The naming was done by Esveld, the Dutch nursery that introduced it, and its catalogue explains the odd name without ceremony: the plant owes it to Het Plantsoen in Leiden, a park on the canal, where this weeping form of the ironwood, planted at the beginning of the twentieth century, was named by them. The national register agrees on the timing, putting the planting between 1910 and 1920, and gives the reason for protection as dendrological. It counts three ironwoods here, standing together near number 45, which is why they appear as one entry rather than three. Their shape is the broad, low, spreading form the cultivar was named for. A Persian ironwood is a witch hazel relative and behaves like one. Small dark red flowers open in February and March on bare branches, before anything else in the park has moved. In October and November the leaves turn yellow, then orange, then red and purple, often several of those at once on one tree. The park itself was laid out between 1835 and 1842 on Leiden's old bulwarks, in the English landscape style, to a design by Salomon van der Paauw. No girth has been published for any of the three.