A Tree as Lovely as a Poem

All my life, I listened to people talk about the grandeur of the Red Bud. I longed to see what they were talking about, but this tree that heralds the start of spring just wasn’t in my vista. Like a Carolina Parakeet my father swore he saw deep in a forest when everybody else was claiming the bird was extinct, the Red Bud seemed just as mythical. Each spring, I’d look up and down the highways, in front yards and back, upside down and sideways. I never saw a Red Bud.

I was, however, familiar with the Judas tree, a tree that blooms up and down our roads just as it grows all over my hometown. A striking tree with fuchsia-colored flowers, it always welcomes me when I get a chance to go home in early spring since it blooms down South before it blooms here. Called the Judas tree because its stock is as old as the Bible, it is said to bloom with blush-colored reminders of a betrayer’s shame. At least that’s the folklore. All I know is that it’s a remarkable sight when I head to South Carolina to get a break from winter.

This year, when people around here started talking about the Red Bud, a tree that seemed to be blooming coast to coast without sharing any of its good tidings with me, I began to feel frustrated. I had been South for Easter, and I had gloried in the Judas tree, but that was not enough anymore. Even when I was visiting California, I overheard people talking about how the Red Bud was just beginning to bud. Where? I saw some mighty Redwood trees out there, as well as the Eucalyptus trees that have invited contoversy, but I didn’t see a Red Bud. The Red Bud was turning into my own elusive parakeet.

Spring has enough color to occupy my senses, so much color that I guess I should not have lamented my inability to spy a Red Bud sprouting here or there. Alas, I did. I realized that I couldn’t go another spring without finding one of these trees, even if it meant I had to ask somebody to take me by the hand down the secret path that leads to Red Buds.

Meanwhile, I looked at the forsythia shimmering gold and green. I watched the dogwood blossoms begin to emerge. Driving down country roads, I was struck by the colorful buds of that old-fashioned favorite, the Judas tree. I had to admit that it seemed hard to believe that a tree alleged to be synonymous with spring could be even more divine than this one.

One morning I found myself at the Emory Post Office, that repository of neighborhood wisdom. Some people were talking about that elusive Red Bud and how beautiful it was this year. Evidently, I was the only person in the tri-state area not to have seen one yet. Then somebody remarked that it seems strange to call a tree with pink flowers a Red Bud, and something clicked. “Is a Red Bud a Judas Tree?” I asked. Nobody knew.

I do now. If John A. Mitchell was the last man in South Carolina to see its last parakeet, I guess my claim to naturalist fame is I’m the last person in Washington County—if not the world—to learn that the elusive tree I pined after for so many years was always there, right in front of my eyes. Cercis canadensis. Judas tree. Red Bud. I’m glad this tree that ushers spring in is nowhere near to extinct.

Felicia Mitchell. First published in Washington County News (Abingdon, VA), 27 April 2005, p. A4. WCN is a publication of Media General Operations. Copyright 2005.