By Carina Magyar in Trees — Apr 10, 2023

I: Redbud

All the ways calendars fail to keep track of time.

The brilliant pink flowers of the Judas Tree. Photo by Alex Batonisashvili / Unsplash

Good morning. Today is primidi, the 21st of Germinal, Year CCXXXI. We celebrate le gainier, a small tree with striking pink flowers.

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The European species of redbud has a Biblical-seeming name in French, arbre de Judée (which d'Eglantine pointedly avoided by using the alternate name of gainier on the calendar). This translates to "tree from Judea" because of the prevalence of redbuds in the eastern Mediterranean, but the British, who have always been sloppy adopters of French words, thought it meant Judas's tree, leading to a folk etymology that it was the tree Judas Iscariot hanged himself from, and the tree remembered the traitorous apostle's death by tinging its flowers from white to pink. In reality, European redbuds only grow 10 feet tall, so to hang one's self from their sturdy lower branches would be quite a feat, unless Judas was only two feet tall.

It's my birthday! Well, according to the Gregorian calendar anyway. One thing I like about this calendar is it shows that our notion of "a year" is wobbly. While April 10 will be the date I put on every form and when people will deign to celebrate me, I wasn't born on Redbud Day. I was born on Apiary Day, 20 Germinal CLXXXVI. Well, if you decide to follow the "Romme Rule" for leap years that was adopted toward the end of the French Republican calendar's active lifespan, in which a leap day was added every four years except every 100th year but then also every 400th year. This rule did a better job of keeping the "new year's day" of 1 Vendémiaire on the autumnal equinox as intended. The initial rule was just every four years no matter what, which would make my birthday 19 Germinal, Radish Day.

So am I a radish, a beehive, or a redbud tree? It's all mathematical opinion.

I: Redbud

X: Apiary

II: Romaine

X: Apiary

II: Romaine

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