Leeds - The Hollies (Yorkshire)

Dawn Redwood - Summer 2015

Thanks to Richard who sent this "photo of the trunk of a Dawn Redwood in The Hollies, Weetwood Lane, Leeds, West Yorkshire. The Hollies is a woodland park, owned and maintained by Leeds City Council Not knowing what this tree was, I was attracted by the colour and texture of the trunk and so took this photo in summer of 2015. Noticing this autumn that it was deciduous I decided to ask the park forman what it was. He told me the name and thinks it is about 40/50 years old." It would have been nice to see more of this tree but it does clearly show the characteristic fluting of the trunk on the Dawn Redwood, which is a very useful means of differentiating them from the Swamp Cypress. The latter has a very similar leaf structure and overall shape and it's easy to confuse the two but once you've seen a number of Dawn Redwood of several decades or older, the difference between them and the smoother trunk profile of the Swamp Cypress is quite apparent. There are examples of their foliage differences on the Redwood Types page.