The Bald Cypress of Paleistuin

This bald cypress grows on a lawn in the garden behind Paleis Noordeinde, the working palace where the King of the Netherlands keeps his office, on ground first laid out as a private garden in the early 17th century by Frederik Hendrik, son of William of Orange, for his mother, and known for centuries afterward as the Prinsessentuin. What was once strictly royal property has been open to the public for generations now, a fact many visitors to the palace's public face on the street never realise extends to the grounds behind it. The register dates the tree's planting to the 1890s, part of what it calls the garden's older planting scheme, well after Frederik Hendrik's original 17th-century design but still well over a century ago. Taxodium distichum is native to swamps across the southeastern United States and, unusually for a conifer, drops its needles every autumn, so it goes from green to rust orange before standing bare through winter alongside the garden's ponds and statues. The garden is free, open from sunrise to sunset, closed only on the occasional day a state visit requires it.