The Pagoda Tree of the Stadtpark

Vienna's tree catalogue dates this one to 1860, and the Stadtpark did not open until August 1862. Whichever way you read that, the pagoda tree was in the ground before the park was, either as one of the very first things planted while the Wien river bank was still a building site or as a tree the landscapers found there and kept. It has grown to 444 centimetres around and stands 21 to 25 metres, on a trunk that forks low and then leans away from itself in two directions at once, so it looks less like a park specimen than like something that had to negotiate for its light. Styphnolobium japonicum is the tree Chinese emperors were buried under and Beijing planted along its temple approaches, and it earns its place in a European park by flowering at the one time of year when almost nothing else does. Late July into August it covers itself in loose sprays of small cream pea-flowers, then drops them, and for a week the path underneath is pale with them. Vienna protected it on 16 December 1941 as Naturdenkmal Nr. 276, the same day it protected the wingnut a hundred and sixty metres away. Both are still here.