The Zijpendaal Giant Arborvitae

This tree is in the middle of turning itself into several trees. Western red cedar layers: branches that reach the ground root where they touch, and new stems rise off the main trunk, so one plant slowly surrounds itself with copies of itself. The national register notes the habit on this specimen with something close to admiration, describing the fresh stems coming off the trunk and calling the result a stage of growth the tree has made for itself. It is not a cedar and it is not from here. Thuja plicata belongs to the wet coastal forests of the Pacific Northwest, where it reaches sixty metres and can live for over a thousand years, and where First Nations of the coast built canoes, houses, rope and clothing out of its wood and bark. This one was planted in the park at Zijpendaal between 1900 and 1910, which puts it at roughly 115 years, and it stands next to a group of copper beeches that are on the register in their own right. The park around it was laid out in 1864 to Eduard Petzold's design, decades before this tree arrived, and the register keeps the two dates firmly apart. It rates the cedar as a large tree in fair to good condition and one of the things people remember about the park. Open, free public parkland, about twenty-five minutes on foot from the station.