Metasequoia glyptostroboides

This is a Dawn Redwood, a deciduous conifer.  We fell in love with some specimens of this tree when we visited the National Botanic Garden of Wales, in Carmarthenshire.  We loved the delicate leaves, but also the trunk develops a beautiful twisted, buttressed appearance. 

They're not so huge as the Californian Redwood, but in the wild in China, they can grow to 60m.  There's one in the Cambridge University Botanic Gardens which grew from 1.5m to 17m in 25 years.  Ours is just under 2m, so I suppose that we may live to see it towering above the rest of the garden.