Adam's Laburnum
age unknownAdam's Laburnumpin approximate
Which one is it? In the walled Parsonage Gardens by the Old Parsonage, reached through Fletcher Moss, among the old trees standing in front of the house. A small tree, unmistakable in flower: yellow, purple and pink hanging on the same plant.
One tree, three colours of flower, and a nurseryman's accident from 1825 behind all of it. In that year the Parisian grower Jean Louis Adam grafted a purple broom onto a common laburnum, and instead of the graft simply taking, the join itself started sprouting shoots built from both plants at once. What grew is a chimaera: a single tree with two identities running through it, propagated ever since from that one plant. Some branches flower laburnum yellow, some broom purple, some a dull pink that is neither. Manchester has one, in Didsbury, and the council's tree survey lists it as a champion in the Tree Register of the British Isles, which keeps Britain's record specimens. Didsbury Civic Society, describing the walled Parsonage Gardens beside the Old Parsonage, calls it a very rare example of early bio-engineering that still survives, which is a fair description of a plant that has been quietly outliving its own novelty for two centuries. Nothing dates this particular tree, so it earns its place on rarity rather than age. Go in late May or June. Out of flower it is a small, ordinary-looking tree with a remarkable story, and in flower it is the only thing in the garden anyone looks at.
The button above opens directions in your maps app. East Didsbury railway station, about a 10 minute walk (per Fletcher Moss Botanical Garden's own Wikipedia entry); East Didsbury Metrolink stop, about a 15 minute walk
The pin marks the right spot roughly, not the tree itself. It stands here, but we have not confirmed the precise position on the ground yet. Know exactly where it is?
- Species
- Adam's Laburnum (+ Laburnocytisus 'Adamii')
- Age estimate
- Location
- Fletcher Moss Botanical Garden / Parsonage Gardens, Stenner Lane, Didsbury, Manchester M20 2RQ (Didsbury)
- Access
- Free, in a public park/botanical garden. Didsbury Civic Society places the specimen in Parsonage Gardens, the walled garden by the Old Parsonage on Stenner Lane, which adjoins and is reached through Fletcher Moss Botanical Garden; look among the 'several magnificent old trees' in front of the Old Parsonage house.
- Getting there
- East Didsbury railway station, about a 10 minute walk (per Fletcher Moss Botanical Garden's own Wikipedia entry); East Didsbury Metrolink stop, about a 15 minute walk
Trees nearby
Ticking this one off, walks past several more, and your collection growing city by city: that is the Ancient Trees app.
Get the appThis page was researched from a distance. If you know this tree, you know things we do not: the species, the age, the size, whether the photo shows the right tree, or that it is gone. Every field on this page can be corrected.
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