Hastings - Ebdon's Hill (Sussex)

A burl at the base of a Coast Redwood

Giant Redwood

Thanks to Jeff for sending the locations and photographs of Redwoods near Hastings. Jeff says, "I've been admiring some quite impressive Redwoods just outside of Hastings for some years now, occasionally going to see them and to pick up bits that have fallen off to do some small carvings. I believe them to be Giant Redwoods. They can be seen quite easily from the road as you drive into Hastings on the A21 on the right hand side as you drive up Ebdon's Hill opposite Moat Lane. These specimens are in excess of 100ft tall. There are 6 Redwoods in total, two of them are Wellingtonia, one is a Dawn redwood, one had lost his top at some point, and the rest are Coast I think. I roughly measured the two wellys at 7.47m & 6.7m @ 1.5m. approximately.. ..maybe the one with the big lump at the base of the tree is not a dawn as I first suspected because it is still green and I assume a dawn would be in winter plumage." Deciding which type of Redwood you have discovered can be quite tricky at first, I was fooled more than once. Nowadays though, after seeing many hundreds, I find it much easier to distinguish between them. The Redwood that you first thought was a Dawn, would indeed have lost it's foliage in Winter, and the big lump you describe (and show in the photograph) is a "burl" which only occur in Coast Redwood. So the final tally of Redwoods here looks to be two Giants and four Coasts. Well spotted!

One of Jeff's carvings