OK - this is an old picture, from nearly eight years ago, but it's one of my favourites of my favourite tree in Mayow Park.
It's the big tall tree near the Pavilion gate entrance, and it's a Dawn Redwood, a.k.a. Metasequoia glyptostroboides.
Apart from the dramatic form, it fascinates me that this species was originally thought to be extinct, known only from the fossil record, alongside the dinosaurs, but them someone, in 1943, found some growing in a remote part of China. It's a conifer, like cedars and pines, but unlike them, it's deciduous.
I think its discovery must have made it very fashionable for planting in parks such as Mayow Park, because I notice a lot of them - there are also some in Sydenham Wells Park, bordering Wells Park Road, which you see as you walk up (so much better a way of getting round than driving). So when I see Dawn Redwoods in parks, I imagine an earlier era of park management, with different fashions for what should grow in them. I'd not say it was better then than now, but how it was interests me still. The man I met waiting from Will 'n' Kate to arrive this Friday also told me he'd working in Mayow Park in the 60s, in the depot which is now Grow Mayow, raising bedding plants.
Anyway, I was thinking about this again today as I went down to my allotment as I noticed the scilla flowing round its base
which seem to flourish rather better than the native celandine and daffodils. I wish those in my garden did as well.
I was also struck by the care with which someone had planted a ring of crocuses further out.
I'm embarrassed to say I'm not sure if these have yet blossomed this year - my crocuses this year have hardly done anything.