The Sequoia of the Sequoiahof

The street is named after the tree. That is rare enough to be the whole reason to come. Streets get named after landowners, saints, battles, queens and, in the twentieth century, after whatever the developer's theme was. Getting a street named after a species because a specimen of it is standing there requires the tree to have been the most notable thing on the site at the moment somebody had to fill in a form, and it means the tree was there first. So the Sequoiahof at Steyl is a piece of evidence. Whoever laid out this housing worked around a giant sequoia planted between 1900 and 1910 by the religious communities that shaped this village, decided it was the defining feature, and wrote that down permanently. That also makes it the least protected of the three sequoias here. The other two are in institutional grounds. This one is in front of a house, on a residential street, with everything that implies about roots under paving and branches near gutters. Stand back on the far pavement to see the shape. Then go and push the bark, which is the same soft fibrous stuff as on the others and never stops being surprising.