guide also said they have very shallow root systems and they stay upright by meshing together with the other redwoods

I was lucky enough to go to Sequoia National Park in the mid 90’s and saw some of the really big old redwoods. They are all above about 4000ft elevation. It is difficult to comprehend just how big they are until you get close to them because in a stand of the large trees there are no ‘normal’ height ones to give a sense of scale. The bark alone is a few feet thick apparently

franksinatra
Full Member

That Redwood World website is ace. Thanks to that I’ve just learnt that the x 4 super cool douglas firs that I can see as I lay in bed are actually Giant Redwoods.

They have pretty distinctive cones, that’s the easiest way to id them.

(Dougies are sort of hilariously nonconformist, you look at tree id guides and yeah, mostly they do look like in the books but every so often you find one that’s gone rogue, “**** it lads, I’m going to grow OUTWARDS instead of up” and it becomes a rectangle. Or “Right that’s enough of this upwards lark, I’m going to go 90 degrees left for a bit, then maybe I’ll go straight down til I hit the ground again and then start over and pretend I’m a different tree lol”)

supernova
Full Member

I’d be happy to see the FoD planted with trees that take 1000 years to mature so the Forestry and their ‘working forest’ bullshit could **** off for a millennium.

There’s quite a few in the fod, not just in the bits where they’ve made an attraction of it but fairly random seeming in the forest and also around the towns. I think a bunch were planted there basically as an experiment in forestry, like at kilmun. Not just redwoods mind, there’s allsorts, massive old red cedars and lodgepoles and silver firs and such, sometimes growing as if wild in the forest

Reminded me of a paragraph from Steinbeck’s Travels With Charley. He reaches his old home turf in Monterey and talks about the Redwoods.

“A number of years ago, a newcomer, a stranger, moved to my country near Monterey. His senses must have been blunted and atrophied with money and the getting of it. He bought a grove of sempervirens in a deep valley near the coast, and then, as was his right by ownership, he cut them down and sold the lumber, and left on the ground the wreckage of his slaughter. Shock and numb outrage filled the town. This was not only murder but sacrilege. We looked on that man with loathing, and he was marked to the day of his death”

The Riding at Santa cruz amongst the redwoods is amazing.

Nature adapts to changing climate shocker.

How’d the seeds naturally get there? Californian swallows?

So coincidentally I just discovered that these articles are all basically bollocks. They all seem to be just repeating and quoting an earlier article which incorrectly compared the number of mature giant redwoods in California, vs the total number in the UK, but in reality there are hundreds of thousands of younger trees outside of the old growth groves that just aren’t catalogued in the Cali numbers

Seems to be an honest mistake- California just can’t get excited about a hundred year old giant redwood when they’ve got the big lads to look at, whereas for us even the tiddlers are a big deal. And of course the preservation arguments rightly focus on the old growth to exclusion, as there’s no way to replace a 3000 year old tree unless you did it 2999 years ago.

Yep, definitely.

Just checked to make sure but there’s a pretty big one in the grounds of The Manor House Hotel in Castle Combe, a pretty swanky place with its own golf course, where a ‘village’ was set up for filming of the Robin of Sherwood series.

So coincidentally I just discovered that these articles are all basically bollocks.

Thought it was a bit odd.

Having driven up there their forests are immense.

<quote> wzzzz
Free Member

au contraire, the natural cycle of wildfires clears the land and opens the cones providing the idea conditions for germination. </quote>

Was, but currently isn’t. The ground and deadfall’s drier, the trees are drier, the wildfires are hotter. And human interaction is a problem; basically wherever there’s human inhabitation and development we try to prevent fires but that often means that when there is a fire, it’s much worse, since it’s been longer since the last one. This last one’s a work in progress, they do controlled burns and manual clearance now in the old groves to try and reset it a bit but it’s a massive job.

Sequoia are fire resistant but not fire proof, they estimate that 20% of all of the surviving oldgrowth giants have been destroyed by fire in the last 10 years

Multiple posters have stated that the seeds require fire to germinate.

I don’t think this is true. Fire is an important feature of the life cycle of the natural forests, particularly in creating space for new trees to germinate, but the seeds themselves do not need any heat or smoke. At least, that is the result of 5 minutes of web searching, looking at a number of seemingly reliable sources. I didn’t see any support for the claim that fire and/or smoke was particularly helpful.

(Some tree seeds do require smoke and/or fire. But sequoia are not one of them. Feel free to collect seeds from your local tree and give it a go.)