The Japanese Pagoda Tree of Karolinenplatz

This tree flowers in August, the quietest month of the year for almost anything else blooming in Munich, and does it well enough into old age that the city has singled it out for legal protection twice over, once for rarity of species and once for its unusual size. Styphnolobium japonicum, despite the common name, is native to China rather than Japan and was introduced to European gardens in the 18th century for exactly this trait: heat tolerance, resistance to drought and pollution, and a late, generous flowering of small cream-white blooms that pollinators rely on after most spring flowerers are finished. Munich's specimen stands on the grounds of the property at Karolinenplatz 2a, part of a formal obelisk square laid out in the early 19th century to commemorate Bavarian soldiers who died in Napoleon's Russian campaign, a considerably more sober origin than the tree growing on it. No source gives the tree a documented planting date, but the city's own register notes its size is rare for the species within Munich's built-up centre, an urban tree doing more than its share of feeding late-summer bees.