The Honey Locust of Calle Aznar Molina

Somebody took three main branches out of this tree and it became a parasol. The honey locust on Calle Aznar Molina now carries a flat, wide, almost horizontal crown on a short trunk, a shape no honey locust arrives at by itself, and it makes this one of the strangest-looking protected trees in Zaragoza. The city's catalogue records the pruning as plain fact and rated the tree's condition good when it was surveyed in 2005. Gleditsia triacanthos is North American, from the Mississippi basin, and in its wild form it is armed: branched thorns up to fifteen centimetres long growing straight out of the trunk and the older wood, generally read as a defence against browsing animals that no longer exist on that continent. Street plantings are usually the thornless kind, chosen for the fine doubled leaves that cast a light, moving shade and fall small enough that nobody has to rake them. It stands in Tenerias, the old tanners' quarter on the edge of the historic centre, three hundred metres from the trees of Parque Bruil, so it joins that walk without a detour. The catalogue is the only source that names it, and it records no age for it. Stand directly underneath and look up. The flat crown against the sky is the entire point of this tree.