Cercidiphyllum japonicum pendulum
Soaring above them both, as high as the house, is the Council’s double flowered gean, England’s wild cherry in its showiest form. No signs of spring here; just the naked scaffold of disordered grey branches, four of them trunk-like but without a trunk’s conviction, knobbly flower-buds apparently not yet feeling any urge to open. There is a Caucasian maple in the nextdoor front garden, too, another tree left unsupervised to grow errant competing branches and end up a winter eye-sore. The katsura thankfully makes up for it.
Nobody can explain why this street is a sort of linear arboretum with scarcely two trees the same, and three or four decidedly rare. Who do I thank for four seasons of enduring intrigue?
