The Giant Sequoia of Sydney Gardens

This sequoia is thought to have arrived with the railway. When the Great Western Railway was cut through Sydney Gardens, work starting in 1839, the slopes either side of the line had to be landscaped again, and the gardens' tree trail thinks this sequoia went in as part of that replanting. On that reading it is over 170 years old. The trail is reasoning from history rather than a planting record, so take the age as its estimate. It has done well out of the deal. The tree now stands 28 metres tall with a trunk 4.98 metres round, and it does not stand alone. It is the middle one of three big conifers along the railway fence, stops 10, 11 and 12 on the trail. First comes a blue Atlas cedar, 24 metres tall, then the sequoia, then a cedar of Lebanon that reaches 29 metres on several trunks and spreads in flat horizontal layers. Three continents' worth of conifer, lined up beside the main line from London. To reach them, cross the bridge over the railway and take the path that leads down towards the tracks. Trains still run past it, on the same line whose cutting, if the trail is right, made room for it. The bark is the giveaway. Giant sequoia bark is thick, red-brown and spongy, and on a trunk nearly five metres round there is a great deal of it.