Huis de Paddestoel's Swamp Cypress

Huis de Paddestoel means Toadstool House, and the bald cypress carrying its name stands where the paperwork about it does not quite agree with itself. The national register lists the tree's address as Herenweg 33, but its own coordinate sits nearly a kilometre away, at Herenweg 131 to 133 in the Wipstrik district, exactly where a 1991 photograph in a local historical archive identifies "Huize de Paddestoel van Schulte Nordholt". The municipality's 2015 survey of the city's protected trees lists only one Taxodium distichum on the entire street, also placed in Wipstrik, also municipally owned, which is almost certainly this same tree rather than a second one nobody else has recorded. Planted somewhere around 1920 to 1930, it now stands close to a century old on the public road verge, at what was once the edge of the private grounds around the house. Bald cypresses are unusual among conifers for dropping their needles every winter, turning a rust orange first, so the tree rewards two visits: one in leaf, one bare. The exact planting year has not been confirmed, so treat the century as an estimate rather than a measurement. The register itself calls the tree visible and open to the public, which the road verge it stands on bears out.