Every spring this tree gives its street a fright.
Southern Catalpa
Not one of these three grew straight. This page maps every southern catalpa on the site, 8 so far across 8 cities.
Breda's leans so far out over the pond in Wilhelminapark that the municipality now props its lowest limbs on columns rather than lose them. Amsterdam's turns as it rises, a slow corkscrew that the national guide to the city's monumental trees names as the reason to stop and look. Milan's has spent about 136 years twisting behind a baroque fish pond in the Giardini della Guastalla, until arborists describe its trunk as closer to sculpture than to a shade tree. The species comes from a small pocket of the southeastern United States and is far commoner in European gardens than at home. Dutch gives it two names and both are literal: trompetboom for the speckled cream flowers in July, bonenboom for the long thin pods that follow.
Amsterdam
Milan
Photo: Fontema (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Milan's oldest public garden, laid out in 1555 for a countess who did not live to see it finished, keeps its strangest tree behind a baroque fish pond nobody expects to find in the middle of the city.
Utrecht
Wilhelminapark's own walking guide to its oldest trees calls this one Trompetboom, trumpet tree, the Dutch common name for catalpa, and once it flowers in July the name explains itself: white, orch...
Breda
This catalpa grew sideways instead of up, and Breda decided to help it keep doing so.
Amersfoort
It is growing on a defensive earthwork built to keep the duke of Gelre out.
Venlo
It stands directly beside a giant sequoia, and the pairing tells you what the monastery gardeners were doing.
Heerlen
This catalpa stands outside Heerlen's town hall, built from the local Kunrade limestone in a style locals still call Roman, and the register bands its planting to 1910-1920, putting it at around 11...
Roosendaal
This catalpa stands southwest of a building on Burgerhoutsestraat, banded by the national register to a planting around 1900, roughly 130 years old.
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