The Arco Giant, one of the largest known redwoods [Robert Van Pelt] (Van Pelt 2001).

Mature sun foliage from the canopy of an old-growth tree [C.J. Earle].

Mature shade foliage from an ornamental tree [C.J. Earle].

Mature seed cones on sun foliage, from Humboldt Redwoods State Park [C.J. Earle].

The very top of the National Geographic Society Tree in 2004 [Steve Sillett]

Sequoia, like all of the Cupressaceae, is cladoptosic: dead foliage falls with the accompanying shoot, rather than as individual leaves [Dr. Linda B. Brubaker].

Range of Sequoia sempervirens (Burns & Honkala 1990).

The Del Norte Titan, largest known redwood [Michael Taylor] (Taylor 1998).

A white redwood in Humboldt Redwoods State Park [C.J. Earle].

U.S. postage stamp, released 2006.

Here I am with a stump of Sequoia affinis at Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument in Colorado. A ranger at the Monument told me that hundreds more such stumps, still buried, have been identified by acoustic imaging [C.J. Earle, 2006.07.05].

Sequoia sempervirens

(D. Don) Endlicher 1847

Common Names

Coast redwood, redwood, California redwood (Little 1980), coastal sequoia, palo colorado.

Taxonomic notes

Syn: Taxodium sempervirens D. Don in Lambert 1824 (Watson 1993); Sequoia sempervirens (Lambert) Endlicher (Peattie 1950). It is the sole species in Sequoia Endlicher 1847. Described varieties include adpressa, glauca, nana pendula, pendula and prostrata (Silba 1986).

Description

Tree to 60-100(110) m tall and 300-460(900) cm dbh. Trunk much enlarged and buttressed at the base and often with rounded swellings or burls, slightly tapering. Crown crown conic and monopodial when young, narrowed conic in age, irregular and open. Bark red-brown, to ca. 35 cm thick, tough and fibrous, deeply furrowed into broad, scaly ridges; inner bark cinnamon-brown. Branches downward sweeping to slightly ascending. Twigs slender, dark green, forking in a plane, ending in a scaly bud. Leaves 1-30 mm, generally with stomates on both surfaces, the free portion to 30 mm, those on leaders, ascending branchlets, and fertile shoots divergent to strongly appressed, short-lanceolate to deltate, those on horizontally spreading to drooping branchlets mostly linear to linear-lanceolate, divergent and in 2 ranks, with 2 prominent, white abaxial stomatal bands. Pollen cones nearly globose to ovoid, 2-5 mm, borne singly on short terminal or axillary stalks. Female cones 12-35 mm long, elliptical, reddish-brown, with many flat, short-pointed scales; pendant at end of leafy twig; maturing in one season; with 2-5 seeds per scale, light brown, 2-winged. Seeds flattened, 3-6 mm, leathery. 2n= 66 (Little 1980, Watson 1993).

The genus Sequoia has been described as follows: "Trees giant, evergreen. Branchlets terete, with obvious annual growth constrictions. Leaves alternate, mostly in 2 ranks. Adult leaves linear or linear-lanceolate to deltate, generally flattened, divergent to strongly appressed; abaxial glands absent. Pollen cones with 6-12 sporophylls, each sporophyll with 2-6 pollen sacs. Seed cones maturing and opening in 1 season, oblong to globose; scales persistent, 15-30, valvate, ± peltate, thick and woody. Seeds 2-7 per scale, lenticular, narrowly 2-winged; cotyledons 2(-4). x = 11" (Watson 1993).

Range

USA: SW Oregon and NW California, confined to coastal areas (within 60 km of the sea) experiencing a great deal of fog; at elevations generally below 300 m, occasionally to 1000 m. Mostly found in alluvial soils, where it forms pure stands or occurs with Pseudotsuga menziesii, Chamaecyparis lawsoniana, or other local conifers (Little 1980, Watson 1993). See also Thompson et al. (1999).

Big Tree

The largest volume tree is the Del Norte Titan, discovered June 1998 in Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park, California, by Steve Sillett and Michael Taylor. This tree has an estimated stem volume of 1044.7 cubic meters and is 93.57 m tall with a dbh of 7.22 m (Van Pelt 2001).

The coast redwood is probably the tallest tree on earth, although one occasionally hears of extraordinarily tall eucalypts in Western Australia, and during historical times there have been Douglas-firs (Pseudotsuga menziesii) known to be taller than any coast redwoods now living. However, it is quite likely that the tallest coast redwoods were early victims of the axe, so it is difficult to say if the redwoods was the tallest of conifers during early historical time. The following table (source, Michael Taylor 1998 updated by Steve Sillett (email Nov-2004) and Bob Van Pelt (pers. comm., Oct-2006), provides summary information on all coast redwoods known to be over 110 meters tall, as measured by direct tape drop or Criterion 400 laser surveyor.

Name	Location	Height (m)	DBH (m)
Hyperion	Redwood National Park, CA	115.55	--
Helios	Redwood National Park, CA	114.34	--
Icarus	Redwood National Park, CA	113.11	3.6
Stratosphere Giant	Humboldt Redwoods State Park, CA	112.87	5.19
National Geographic Society Tree	Redwood National Park	112.74	4.30
Paradox Tree	Humboldt Redwoods State Park	112.59	3.78
Federation Giant	Humboldt Redwoods State Park	112.45	4.38
Mendocino Tree	Montgomery Woods State Preserve, CA	112.01	3.17
Harry Cole Tree	Redwood National Park	111.65	4.94
Swamp Tree	Montgomery Woods	110.77	3.02
Pipe Dream Tree	Humboldt Redwoods State Park	110.64	4.27
Redwood Creek Giant	Redwood National Park	110.4	5.21
Lost Hope Tree	Humboldt Redwoods State Park	110.4	5.03
Rockefeller Tree	Humboldt Redwoods State Park	110.34	4.14
Daedalus	Redwood National Park	110.34	--

Oldest

Several data point to a maximum age of somewhat more than 2000 years. A ring-counted age of 2200 years was reported for a specimen from N California collected by Fritz (Brown 1996). This was probably a stump count. I have a section cut from a log in Humboldt Redwoods State Park that has at least 2026 rings. HERE is a report on it, the only one available. This specimen has poor circuit uniformity with many missing rings, so it may be as old or older than Fritz' specimen. There is also said to be a cross-section on display at the visitor center in Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park, Santa Cruz, CA, that has 1935 rings with the center of the log missing; the original tree was felled in Humboldt County (Kenyon Moon email 2007.11.04).

A few years ago, dendrochronology suffered a bit of a scandal - or at least, what might pass for a scandal in this peaceful field of study - when a person having no knowledge of the subject represented themselves as an expert to someone at the Guinness Book of World Records, claiming to have found a 12,000 year old redwood tree, which they modestly named the Eternal God Tree. Guinness duly published the claim. Later that year, I was shown the tree and had the opportunity to sample it with an increment borer. The sample produced 515 years and the tree is rotten inside of that. Given the tree's relatively small size (about 3 meters in diameter, which, yes, is "small" in comparison with other trees nearby), I would very much doubt it could be a day over 2,000 years old, and my best guess is about 1,200 years - a tenth of its claimed age. Incidentally, the 2,026-year-old tree described above was assigned an age of 7,000 years by the same person. I only mention this because you may see these fanciful ages of 7,000 and 12,000 years reported in the news media.

Dendrochronology

Fritz (1940) found that the species is not generally useful due to poor circuit uniformity (i.e. the rings do not go all the way around). However, a more exhaustive study by Schulman (1940) found that circuit uniformity improves when samples are taken well above the base of the tree; he successfully crossdated samples from cross-sections taken (from logged trees) 100 feet (30 meters) above the ground, and found evidence of narrow rings in drought years. However, his work has not been followed up.

Ethnobotany

Observations

The species is well protected in its native range and can easily be seen in California's Redwood National Park, Muir Woods National Monument, and a long chain of State Parks of which some of the more noteworthy are, from north to south, Jedediah Smith Redwoods, Prairie Creek Redwoods, Humboldt Redwoods, and Big Basin Redwoods.

Remarks

The genus is widely thought to be named for Sequoyah, also known as George Guess, inventor and publisher of the Cherokee alphabet. Endlicher was also a philologist, so he likely knew of Sequoyah's achievements. Unfortunately, Endlicher's writings give no clue to the etymology of Sequoia, and some very eminent botanists have proposed plausible alternatives. Asa Gray, for instance, thought it came from the Latin sequi, 'following', since it is the sole living representative of a sizable group of extinct plants (Hartesveldt et al. 1975).

The genus has a rich fossil record in western North America, represented by the Eocene and Oligocene fossil taxon Sequoia affinis and the pollen morphogenera Taxidiaceaepollenites and Sequoiapollenites. Well-preserved examples of S. affinis cones, foliage and wood - including in situ stumps over 200 cm dbh - have been found at Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument (Anonymous [no date]), at Copper Basin in Nevada (Inyo [no date]), and at various other locations in the West. The resemblance to S. sempervirens is striking.

Redwood is one of the few vegetatively reproducing conifers, readily regenerating from stump sprouts in the wake of a major disturbance (typically fire). One peculiar consequence of this is the occurrence of 'white redwoods' (see photo), which are trees that originate as root sprouts and are competely nonphotosynthetic, deriving all of their carbohydrate from the roots of their photosynthetic associates (which are not necessarily related, as root grafting is common between redwoods). White redwoods are found only in old-growth forests, where the overstory biomass of photosynthetic redwoods is colossal (redwood forests have the highest aboveground biomass loadings in the world) and the white trees are generally less than 3 meters tall. However, white redwoods up to 20 meters tall are known to exist. The tree in the photograph is about 10 m tall. At the time of the photograph, the new year's foliage had not emerged; trees clad in fresh foliage are snow-white.

Redwood is the only naturally occurring hexaploid conifer. Redwoods (Sequoia sempervirens and Sequoiadendron giganteum) are the state tree of California (Watson 1993).

The sequoias (including Sequoia and Sequoiadendron) were another group, like Metasequoia, first known from the fossil record, although fossil material was not formally named until Steinhauera Presl 1838, ten years after Lambert described this species as Taxodium sempervirens (Hartesveldt et al. 1975).

The species was early (ca. 1826) introduced to Spain thanks to the collections of Tadeas Haenke during the Malaspina expedition; an account of these trees appears HERE.

Citations

Anonymous. [no date]. Welcome to Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument! [link too long to display] (accessed 2006.10.03). Includes photos of Sequoia affinis fossils.

Fritz, E. 1940. Problems in dating rings of California coast redwood. Tree-Ring Bulletin 6(3):19-21. Available online at www.treeringsociety.org/TRBTRR/TRBvol6_3.pdf (accessed 2006.06.05).

Inyo. [no date]. Field Trip To The Copper Basin Fossil Flora, Nevada. members.aol.com/Waucoba7/cb/copperbasin.html (accessed 2006.10.03).

Schulman, E. 1940. Climatic chronology in some coast redwoods. Tree-Ring Bulletin 6(3):22-23. Available online at www.treeringsociety.org/TRBTRR/TRBvol6_3.pdf (accessed 2006.06.05).