The Handkerchief Tree of the Oude Hortus

For about ten days every May, this tree looks like it is covered in hundreds of small white handkerchiefs, or according to the alternative common name, a flock of ghosts caught mid-flutter. What actually flowers are pairs of oversized white bracts, modified leaves rather than petals, that hang beneath each small flower cluster and catch any breath of wind. Davidia involucrata was unknown to Western botany until 1869, when the French missionary and naturalist Armand David first documented it in the mountains of central China, and it stayed a horticultural rarity for decades afterward because its seeds are notoriously reluctant to germinate, sometimes taking two winters before anything happens at all. Utrecht's specimen, in the walled garden behind the University Museum, is one of the relatively few handkerchief trees the Netherlands has managed to establish and keep alive to a real size, now tall enough to tower over the path beneath it. Outside its two-week May window, it reads as an unremarkable mid-sized tree with heart-shaped leaves, nothing that would make a passerby stop. The garden rewards exactly that kind of patience: come at the wrong time and miss the point entirely, come in May and understand immediately why a tree can be worth crossing a continent for.