Appearance
The flowers of the Judas tree, Cercis siliquastrum, often grow directly from the trunk. This is known as cauliflory.
The Judas tree, Cercis siliquastrum, is a small deciduous tree that can grow to 12m tall and 10m diameter. It often forms a low and irregular 1-sided dome and is decumbent with age, the branches upswept from ground level.
Bark:
- purplish and folded or ridged when young
- becomes grey, with numerous fine brown fissures
Twigs:
- glabrous, dark red-brown at first
- become grey in places, with conspicuous lenticels
Buds:
- 3-5mm
- narrowly conic
- dark red
- appressed, hidden in the bases of the leaf-stalks then rimmed by their scars
Leaves:
- alternate
- 6-10 x 10-12cm
- reniform to broadly and bluntly obcordate, slightly sinuate, entire, obscurely mucronate, glabrous, 7-nerved
- brownish-bronze-tinted when expanding, becoming matt-grey-green, more glaucous below
- petiole:
- 5cm
- yellowish-green, dark red-brown at base
- stipules deciduous
Flowers:
- hermaphrodite
- appear before the leaves in May
- borne as sessile clusters or short racemes of 3-6 flowers on year old, or older growth, often directly from the wood (cauliflory)
- 1.4-2.0cm long
- pale rose to magenta, rarely white
- keel exceeds the standard
- 10 stamens, free
- ovary short stalked
- pedicels slender, to 2mm
Fruit:
- a strongly flattened oblong pod, 5-10 x 1.3-1.8cm
- narrowly (1.5mm) winged on the ventral suture
- pale purple turning dull brown
- hang vertically and persist on the tree into winter
- more or less dehiscent
- 8-12 seeds, flat
- calyx persistent as circa 15 whiskers to 1cm long
