In early summer, the flowers are produced in racemes which grow fully from the branches. Under the blue midsummer sky, the golden flowers bloom. The fluttering petals are like golden raindrops and fall everywhere on campus. The flowering season is from May to July. From summer to the end of winter, the 30-60 cm long seed pods turn from light green to dark green to deep purple as time passes, almost like a smoked sausage being dried from a pole.

The poet Yu Guangzhong described Indian laburnum thus: "One after the other, in a string, the series of brilliant golden lamps, are hung with such carelessness in early summer, above the passersby's heads, so that all the eyes, looking up in surprised wonderment, like bees flying into a fairytale, are dazzled and lose their way."

Huang Jin-Lung, lecturer from the College of Arts, completed two oil paintings with laburnum as the subject in 2005, titled "Shida's Flower I" and "Shida's Flower II".
The reason that the laburnum is the School Tree has never been confirmed. One theory is that the long seed pods closely resemble the whips used by teachers in the olden days!