Amur Cork Tree

The Amur cork tree carries a thick, soft, deeply ridged corky layer that dents under a hand and springs back, and Munich's natural monument ordinance protects its specimen for exactly that, an interesting bark pattern, while calling the species extremely rare in the city. Under the cork the inner bark is a startling sulphur yellow, and it is one of the fundamental herbs of Chinese medicine. Paris's went into a small garden opposite the Collège de France in 1925 and wears a lightning scar down the trunk. Washington's stand inside the Roosevelt Memorial with no provenance at all: in 1962 the Park Service went looking for a planting record, found none, and kept the trees on the grounds that they were, in its own words, very attractive old trees.