Some trees are famous for their age, some for their colour and some for the roads they frame. These sixteen remarkable trees and tree landscapes run from a 3,200-year-old giant sequoia in California and the dragon’s blood trees of Socotra to the wisteria of Ashikaga, the jacarandas of South Africa and the beech avenue of the Dark Hedges in Northern Ireland.

Large flowering pink rhododendron spreading beside a house
A 125-year-old rhododendron in full flower spreads beside a house.

Flowering giants: rhododendron, wisteria, cherry and jacaranda

1. The 125-year-old rhododendron

A rhododendron is a shrub, but an old one can grow as wide as a house. This pink specimen, said to be 125 years old, shows how a single garden plant can fill a whole frontage with colour in late spring.

2. The great wisteria of Ashikaga, Japan

Long purple wisteria flowers hanging from a broad supported canopy in Japan
The great wisteria of Ashikaga Flower Park, trained over a wide trellis.
Wisteria canopy in Japan seen from beneath the hanging flowers
Walking beneath the wisteria: the trellis lets visitors stand inside the canopy.

Ashikaga Flower Park in Tochigi Prefecture, north of Tokyo, is home to Japan’s most famous wisteria, a vine now well over 150 years old whose branches are trained across trellises so visitors can walk beneath curtains of purple flowers. The park covers about 100,000 m² and also has a white wisteria tunnel. The best time to visit is mid-April to mid-May. Ashikaga Flower Park Station on the JR Ryomo Line is a three-minute walk from the gate. Our Ashikaga Flower Park guide has more photographs.

Wisteria is a climber, and these canopies are the result of decades of support and pruning; the Royal Horticultural Society’s growing guide explains how to train one at home.

3. The cherry blossom streets of Bonn, Germany

Cherry blossoms forming a pink tunnel over a street in Bonn, Germany
Ornamental cherries meet overhead in the old town of Bonn.

In Bonn’s Altstadt, Heerstraße and Breite Straße are each lined with about 60 ‘Kanzan’ cherries whose branches meet overhead in a pink tunnel. The city planted around 300 ornamental cherries in the old town in the late 1980s as part of an urban renewal project. Bloom usually starts in late March and peaks around mid-April for 10–14 days.

4. The jacarandas of Cullinan, South Africa

Jacaranda trees in purple flower in Cullinan, South Africa
Jacarandas in flower in Cullinan, east of Pretoria.

Cullinan, the diamond-mining town about 30–40 km east of Pretoria where the 3,106-carat Cullinan Diamond was found in 1905, turns purple when its jacarandas flower. In South Africa the trees bloom every October. The species, Jacaranda mimosifolia, comes from South America, and Pretoria’s estimated 65,000 trees have earned it the nickname Jacaranda City.

Ancient and giant trees: the President, Angel Oak and Madagascar’s baobabs

5. The President, Sequoia National Park, California

The President giant sequoia in Sequoia National Park, California
The President, a giant sequoia in the Giant Forest of Sequoia National Park.

The President stands in the Giant Forest of Sequoia National Park. It is about 247 feet (75 m) tall and about 3,240 years old, the oldest known living giant sequoia, and ranks as the second-largest tree in the world by total wood volume of trunk and branches. Read more in our story The President Sequoia in a 126-Frame Portrait.

6. Angel Oak, Johns Island, South Carolina

Angel Oak, a spreading live oak on Johns Island, South Carolina
The Angel Oak on Johns Island, near Charleston.

The Angel Oak is a southern live oak estimated at 400–500 years old. It is only about 66 feet tall, but its crown shades about 17,200 square feet and its longest branch reaches 187 feet. The tree takes its name from the estate of Justus and Martha Angel, and the City of Charleston has owned it and the surrounding park since 1991. See our Angel Oak guide for visiting details.

7. The Avenue of the Baobabs, Madagascar

Tall baobab trees in Madagascar
Baobabs in Madagascar, the only home of Grandidier’s baobab.

Along the dirt road between Morondava and Belon’i Tsiribihina in western Madagascar, some 20–25 Grandidier’s baobabs (Adansonia grandidieri) line a 260-metre stretch, with about 25 more in the rice fields nearby. The trees reach about 30 m. The avenue received temporary protection in 2007 and has been a protected natural monument since 2015.

8. The dragon’s blood tree, Socotra, Yemen

Dragon blood tree with an umbrella-shaped crown in Yemen
The dragon’s blood tree of Socotra, Yemen’s national tree.

Dracaena cinnabari grows only on the Socotra archipelago in the Arabian Sea, part of Yemen, and is the country’s national tree. Its dense, upturned umbrella crown helps it survive the arid climate. The dark red resin, called dragon’s blood, was used as a dye, a medicine and a varnish for violins, and still is for violins today. The species is listed as Vulnerable, threatened by goats, logging and a drying climate.

Colour and form: rainbow eucalyptus, Japanese maple and wind-shaped trees

9. Rainbow eucalyptus, Kauai, Hawaii

Multicoloured bark of a rainbow eucalyptus tree in Kauai, Hawaii
Rainbow eucalyptus on Kauai, where the species is planted as an ornamental.
Close view of streaked rainbow eucalyptus bark on Kauai
Strips of shed bark reveal green, red, orange and purple streaks.

Eucalyptus deglupta, also called Mindanao gum, is native to the Philippines, Indonesia and Papua New Guinea and is the only eucalyptus that normally grows in rainforest. As its orange outer bark peels away in strips, it reveals streaks of pale green, red, orange, grey and purple-brown. In the wild it reaches 60–75 m; in Hawaii it is planted as an ornamental. Our rainbow eucalyptus feature has more pictures.

10. The Japanese maple

Japanese maple with brightly coloured foliage
A Japanese maple, known in Japan as momiji.
Japanese maple branches and leaves in colour
The hand-shaped leaves gave the species its Latin name, palmatum.

Acer palmatum, called momiji in Japan, is native to Japan, Korea, China and the Russian Far East. It usually grows 6–10 m tall, and Japanese gardeners have bred it for centuries: more than 1,000 cultivars exist, many prized for their autumn colour. Carl Peter Thunberg named it palmatum for its hand-shaped leaves, and it reached Britain in 1821.

11. Wind-shaped trees in New Zealand

Trees bent and shaped by the wind in New Zealand
Trees deformed by the wind in an exposed New Zealand landscape.

On New Zealand’s exposed southern coasts, constant gales off the Southern Ocean prune trees into crowns that lean almost horizontally away from the wind. The sight is famous around Slope Point in the Catlins, the southernmost tip of the South Island, a 20-minute walk across farmland that is closed during lambing from September to November.

12. The wild tree in Brazil

Wild tree with an unusual silhouette in Brazil
A wild tree in Brazil.

Not every remarkable tree has a name or a plaque. This lone wild tree in Brazil earns its place through its striking silhouette alone, a reminder that the country’s forests and open country hold countless unnamed giants.

Tree tunnels and avenues: Oregon, Boone Hall and the Dark Hedges

13. The moss-draped beech in Oregon

Beech tree covered with hanging moss in Oregon
A beech tree hung with moss in Oregon.

In western Oregon’s damp climate, mosses and lichens cover trunks and hang from branches, turning a single beech into a green sculpture.

14. A tunnel of maples in Oregon

Road through a tunnel of maple trees in Oregon
A tunnel of maple trees in Oregon.

Planted along both sides of a road, these maples have grown together into a continuous green roof. For more like it, see Twenty Tree Tunnels: Flowering Streets, Garden Arches and Woodland Paths.

15. The Avenue of Oaks, Boone Hall, Mount Pleasant

Avenue of live oaks at Boone Hall in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina
The Avenue of Oaks at Boone Hall Plantation, Mount Pleasant.

At Boone Hall Plantation, 88 southern live oaks and one magnolia line a three-quarter-mile drive to the main house. Planting began in 1743 and was completed in 1843 by the Horlbeck brothers, with the work done by enslaved gardeners and labourers. The plantation’s grounds have appeared in North and South and The Notebook.

16. The Dark Hedges, County Antrim, Northern Ireland

The Dark Hedges beech avenue on Bregagh Road, Northern Ireland
The Dark Hedges, an 18th-century beech avenue in County Antrim.
Intertwined beech branches arching over the road at the Dark Hedges
The beeches were planted around 1775 along the approach to Gracehill House.

Around 1775 James Stuart planted more than 150 beech trees along Bregagh Road, the approach to his new Gracehill House, between Armoy and Stranocum. About 86 remained in a 2023 survey, and storms have felled several since. The avenue played the King’s Road in Game of Thrones, and the road has been closed to most traffic since October 2017, so visitors walk it.

For more extraordinary trees, see Beth Moon’s portraits of ancient trees and flowers that resemble faces and birds.

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