The Wellingtonias by the Lower Pond, Combe Dingle

Two Californian giants stand thirty metres apart at the bottom of a Bristol valley, beside a stream and a small pond. The thicker of the pair measures 7.1 metres round, which makes it, according to the Bristol Tree Forum, the largest of the three Wellingtonias on the Blaise Castle Estate. Its partner, about 30 metres away, is 6 metres round. Wellingtonia is the British name for the giant sequoia, the species of the biggest trees on Earth in the Sierra Nevada, and in Britain it is a newcomer. The Forum's account is that seed reached the Veitch nursery in 1855. It dates the smaller of these two at about 150 years. That is an estimate from the species' arrival, not a planting record, so the pair are best thought of as somewhere between 150 and 170 years old. That makes them young by the standards of this list, and by the standards of their own species, which can live for thousands of years in California. Here, beside the lower pond on the Trym, they are a century and a half into that. The third of the estate's Wellingtonias, 33 metres tall, stands near the house, about 900 metres away. We have only the Forum's survey for these trees. If you know more about who planted them, tell us.