Ipe

Ipe blooms naked, and the court gasps every time. The pink trumpet tree flowers before it leafs — bare branches erupting in clouds of pink trumpets, no green anywhere, a tree caught in the act of pure blossom. Other bloomers dress their flowers in foliage; he declines the framing. "The flower," he says, "needs no introduction." The Flowering Court, which has seen everything, has never gotten used to it — each spring the leafless eruption stops conversation mid-sentence. His wood is iron-hard, famous as ipê timber; his roots are deep; but for two weeks a year none of that matters, because he is a pink cloud with a trunk. Young trees ask if the nakedness isn't vulnerable. He shakes his blossoms. "Vulnerable," he says, "is a leaf's word. I am a flower's tree."