The Sequoia of the Toernooiveld

Planted on a field named after jousting, which is a collision of two ideas about display separated by five centuries. The Toernooiveld belongs to Kasteel Arcen, north of Venlo on the Maas. The sequoia went in between 1860 and 1870, which puts it within about fifteen years of the species arriving in Europe at all. Seed reached Britain in 1853 and the tree was an immediate sensation: enormous, foreign, from a part of California nobody had seen, and expensive. Owners of country places across Europe bought them the way they bought anything else that announced reach. This is one of the earliest in the Netherlands, and it is now more than a century and a half into a lifespan that runs to three thousand years. The bark is the reason to go rather than the height. It is thick, soft and fibrous, and you can push a fist into it. That is fire adaptation: in a Sierra Nevada forest the outer layer chars and insulates while the living tissue survives, which is how these trees outlast dozens of fires. The castle gardens charge admission, so check before making the trip.