梧桐 wutong: the plane tree behind our name

every name is a small story, and ours is about a tree. wutong is how you say 梧桐, the word shanghai uses for the plane trees that shade its old streets, and it begins with 吴, wu, the family name behind the label. here’s where the word comes from, why a shanghai street tree is also a london one, and why a leaf felt right for a glove.

what does wutong mean?

in classical chinese, 梧桐, wútóng, is the chinese parasol tree, firmiana simplex¹, a tree woven into legend: the phoenix was said to perch on no other. describing a sixteenth or seventeenth-century painting of a phoenix, the smithsonian’s national museum of asian art says the branches of the wu tong, which it calls a paulownia, are believed to be the only ones on which a phoenix is willing to perch², an idea that goes back to the zhuangzi, where the phoenix flies from the south sea to the north sea stopping on no tree but the parasol tree³.

in shanghai, though, wutong usually means something else. most shanghainese call the plane tree 法国梧桐, the “french parasol tree”, or french wutong⁴, and in everyday speech the trees lining the old streets are simply wutong.

why are shanghai’s plane trees called french wutong?

because the french planted them. according to a walking history of the former french concession, the french brought the tree with them when they built their first great boulevard from the bund across the concession, and from 1902 plane trees were planted along many of its streets, which is why locals call them faguo wutong⁵. sixth tone notes that street trees were first introduced to shanghai in 1865, when the british and americans planted them in their own concessions⁶. the tree spread far beyond: in 1927 the nationalist government planted twenty thousand in nanjing, and it is now a common roadside tree across china⁵.

where can you see shanghai’s plane trees?

in the old streets of the former french concession, where the canopy meets over the road. the city’s international service portal points visitors to wukang road, hengshan road, yuyuan road and sinan road, where sunlight filters through the yellow leaves onto old western-style houses, and notes that certain streets are left unswept each year⁷. in 2020 the city named forty-one streets where sweepers would leave the leaves, an idea xuhui district began in 2013⁶.

what is the london plane?

london’s most common tree. the london plane is a hybrid of the american sycamore and the oriental plane, first noticed in the mid-seventeenth century, possibly in john tradescant the younger’s nursery garden in london, and planted widely from the late eighteenth century⁸. it copes with city air because its bark breaks away in large flakes, it can grow to 35 metres and live for several hundred years, and its leaves, thick and leathery with five triangular lobes, turn a rich orange-yellow in autumn⁸. most of the roadside trees on a walk through shanghai’s former french concession are london planes too⁵.

what does a plane leaf look like?

broad and hand-shaped. the woodland trust describes london plane leaves as thick and leathery, sycamore-like, with five triangular lobes, turning a rich orange-yellow in autumn⁸. in shanghai’s old streets the city leaves certain streets unswept each year, for the picturesque effect⁷.

why are plane trees so loved in shanghai?

because they are part of how the old city looks. the city’s international service portal calls shanghai’s plane trees iconic and pairs them with its historic architecture, sunlight filtering through the yellow leaves onto old western-style houses⁷. for many people the tree is shorthand for the city itself, which is why the name felt like home.

why a leaf for a glove label?

because a plane leaf opens like a hand: five lobes spread from a single point, like fingers from a palm. a glove is a hand you can hold, and a leaf is a hand a tree holds up, and the plane tree is the same shade over two cities, the old french concession in shanghai and the streets of london. the name is a way of carrying both.

how do you say wutong?

woo-tong. in mandarin, 梧 is wú and 桐 is tóng, both with a rising tone, and 吴, the family name, is also wú. the wordmark, wutong 吴, puts the name and the family name side by side.

what does wutong make?

gloves for women, in sheepskin nappa, suede and calf hair, each style one size and made in small runs per colour. you can see them all on the home page, from the 001 fringe gloves to the 006 brown python gloves, and read glove trends for winter 2026 for what’s new this season.