The Judas Tree of Fer a Cheval

The flowers on this tree come straight out of the bark. Judas trees are cauliflorous, meaning the blossom breaks directly from the trunk and the oldest branches rather than from new shoots, and for two or three weeks in early spring a mature one is covered in hard magenta pea flowers before a single leaf has opened. The name is probably a mistranslation. Cercis siliquastrum is the arbre de Judee, the tree of Judea, where it grows wild; somewhere along the way that turned into the tree Judas hanged himself from, with the flowers reddening in shame, which is the better story and almost certainly not the origin. Toulouse has one on its remarkable tree list in the Fer a Cheval part of Saint-Cyprien, on the left bank of the Garonne. Two honest caveats come with it. The register gives the species and the position and nothing else, no age, no size, no description, and no other source names it. And the setting needs checking on the day: the ground here maps as sports fields, which normally means you can walk through it, but this page has not confirmed the exact site or its hours. Go expecting a public sports ground rather than a garden. The flowering is the reason to come, and it is short.