The Sophora of Aleja Niepodległości

This tree stands in front of a park nobody is allowed to enter. Behind it, on the far side of a fence on Aleja Niepodleglosci, lies Park SGGW, the grounds of the Warsaw University of Life Sciences, shut to the public since the university moved south to Ursynow and still shut today, with Mokotow residents publicly campaigning to have it opened. The pagoda tree is on the useful side of the fence, on the open pavement of the avenue, which is the only reason it appears here at all. Poland's register of natural monuments has protected it since 22 October 1976 and cannot quite settle on what to call it: the paperwork carries both sofora chinska and sofora japonska, Chinese sophora and Japanese sophora. Chinese is the accurate half. The species is native to China and took its Japanese name from the cultivated trees Europeans met first, in Japan. No source found so far gives an age or a girth, which leaves the two things people usually ask about entirely open; if you know either, tell us. What is not in doubt is the timing. It flowers cream in August, several weeks after almost everything else in Warsaw has finished, and drops the petals on the pavement underneath. The SGGW Oak stands 85 metres away, on the other side of the avenue.