Contorted and deeply furrowed, the flared bole of this tree has a Lord of the Rings quality. I almost expect it to start moving and lumber towards me like an Ent. Beneath the point where each branch leaves the trunk there are shadowy elbow-deep clefts. Its muscular ridges are a rich burnt orange, and ripple down to the ground like anchoring roots, making the twisted trunk look like it is screwing itself down into the earth. This is a dawn redwood, Metasequoia glypstostroboides, one of an avenue either side of Farm Drive in Hulne Park.
A medieval hunting ground of thousands of acres that provided food and wood for Alnwick Castle, Hulne Park is entirely enclosed in a 3m high perimeter wall. Deep in its heart are the ivy-draped ruins of a 13th-century Carmelite monastery, built on a steep grassy mound. We enter the demesne through the arched gateway of Forest Lodge, where early periwinkles bloom beneath walls covered in leafless vines of Virginia creeper. A woodpecker drums on a reverberating branch and the sound of a crowing cockerel echoes through the woods.
One side of the drive is level ground, the other rises and falls along an undulating bank. Some of the trees are squat and stunted, while others hold the neat flame shape that has made the dawn redwood a popular tree for amenity planting. The bark is fibrous and spongy; you can dig your nail into its flaky surface. A deciduous conifer, its fresh foliage has the bright green ferny look of larch leaves. They turn coppery pink in autumn.
Until the 1940s, when it was discovered growing in China, the dawn redwood was only known from fossil specimens found throughout the northern hemisphere. Believed to have survived unchanged since the Cretaceous era, the first of the rediscovered trees to be grown in Britain can be found in the Cambridge University Botanic Garden. Though fast-growing, the dawn redwood is critically endangered in the wild. As we walk along the drive through the avenue of trees, marvelling at the individuality of each, we are walking between living fossils.
