The False Acacia on the Ciudadela Wall

A tree from the eastern United States holds the high ground in Pamplona's sixteenth-century citadel. This false acacia, as the Spanish call the black locust, grows on top of a mound of the Ciudadela's walls, in the five-sided fortress the city built between 1571 and 1645, and Pamplona's 2010 book of old and singular trees picks it out for two things, its size and its flowers in spring. The size is 3.15 metres round at chest height and 19 metres tall on a single straight leader, with a crown 15.5 metres across. That makes it the larger of the book's only two entries for its species. The authors say so plainly. The tree is planted everywhere in gardens, yet apart from this one, a twisted group at the Caballo Blanco and some worth a mention under the walls on the Ronda Obispo Barbazán, they found no others in Pamplona worth the word singular. The flowers come in hanging clusters, white and scented, and are popularly called pan y quesillo, bread and cheese, for their pleasant smell and taste. The book adds that the tree is generally toxic, so the nickname is as far as it should go. Its hard yellowish wood stands up to the weather well enough to be used for posts in farm fences. On the same mound the book points out a group of pines and white poplars it also rates as spectacular. Nobody has given this tree an age. If you know it, tell us.