The Giant Sequoia of Laurenspark

Despite its name, Ulvenhoutselaan runs inside Breda, not the separate village of Ulvenhout the street is named after, and this giant sequoia stands well within city limits along it, in the Ginneken district in the south of town. Planted in 1885, measured at 25 metres tall and 5.70 metres around, it belongs to the wave of Californian conifers that spread through Dutch estates and parks in the second half of the 19th century, after the species was first introduced to Europe in the 1850s and became, briefly, a fashionable statement for anyone with land to plant on. At 140 years old it has had time to become a genuinely large tree by Dutch standards without coming close to challenging its own species' natural lifespan, which can run past two thousand years in California's Sierra Nevada. Ginneken itself was a separate village until it merged into Breda in the 20th century, which makes the sequoia's setting a small irony of its own: a street named for a village that is not this tree's home, in a neighbourhood that used to be a different one. Free to see, in a quiet residential park rather than a tourist destination, it rewards anyone who already knows where to look.