The Coffee-tree of Queen Elizabeth Driveway

The name is literal. Settlers in Kentucky roasted the seeds of this tree and drank them, which is how a member of the pea family came to be called a coffee-tree. It has no business being this far north. Ontario's own species at risk assessment, published in 2021, lists the Kentucky coffee-tree as threatened in the province, rarely found growing wild, and known as a planted tree as far north and east as Ottawa. This is one of those planted trees. The National Capital Commission's register says William Saunders had several of them put in near Queen Elizabeth Driveway at the beginning of the twentieth century, while the driveway was still being built, amid what it calls the general enthusiasm for growing rare North American trees. Saunders ran the Dominion Experimental Farms from 1887 until around 1911, which fits the claim, though no source outside the register connects him to this particular tree. Coffee-trees are male or female, and only a female with a male in pollen range sets the thick leathery pods the species is known for. Nobody has recorded which this one is. That is a five second observation for anyone standing under it in autumn, and we would take the answer. The leaf is the other thing to look for: doubly compound, up to about a metre long, and so late to appear that the tree spends half of spring looking dead.