Researchers found that the Victorians brought so many seeds and saplings to Britain that the trees now outnumber those in their US homeland
hree redwoods tower over Wakehurst’s Elizabethan mansion like skyscrapers. Yet at 40 metres high, these are almost saplings – not even 150 years old and already almost twice as high as Cleopatra’s Needle.
When Wilkes and his fellow researchers at Kew and University College London highlighted the numbers last week, they provoked a wave of interest, and visitors to Wakehurst’s gardens have talked of little else.“People are often worried that they’re an invasive species, but they seem to be pretty benign,” Wilkes says. “There’s no evidence they’re self-seeding.”
Redwood aficionados have charted some of the locations, from people’s back gardens to parks and suburban streets where homes have been built around the trees. But as the redwoods have grown, so have opportunities for conflict, such as in Canons Drive in Edgware, north London, where some residents are fighting to protect an avenue of giant sequoias under threat from insurance companies concerned about roots undermining the houses.
In the more ecologically enlightened 21st century, Wilkes identifies a different risk: that the desire to find fixes for the climate crisis will lead to rash choices.