If you could follow one tree for a year, what would it be?

British blogger Lucy Corrander at Loose and Leafy followed a sycamore tree last year, but says its size was a disadvantage — “all the ‘action’ happens high up. At ground level, shade and location mean it’s not a good place for other plants to grow… what little there is that struggles into life between its toes tends to get nibbled as soon as it shows its head above ground.” She doesn’t want to blog about trees in isolation, but as members of an ecological community.

So this year’s tree, by contrast, is part of a small but dense clump of vegetation, and is so small and “scraggy,” it’s “hardly a tree at all.” But a tree it is, and one of some significant folkloric and even exotic appeal to this North American reader (though we do have a closely related member of the same genus). What’s the species? Read the post to find out.