Judas Tree

Cercis siliquastrum is cauliflorous, so in spring, before a single leaf opens, rosy purple blossom breaks directly from the trunk and the old wood, and the tree looks briefly upholstered rather than in bloom. The name is old and unkind, from the tradition that Judas hanged himself from one. It is usually a small tree that goes sideways: the one on Placa Joanic in Barcelona is five metres tall under a crown ten metres across. Seville's in the Alcázar's English Garden has done what the species rarely bothers to, reaching sixteen metres. The oldest stands on the cold north side of a church on the Great Hungarian Plain at Mélykút, about 250 years old, a long way from the warm hillsides it belongs to. Go in spring, before the leaves.