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Big Tree and the Redwood — Part 2

The living trees are green topped, but bare of limbs for two-thirds of their great fluted trunks. Our tallest Eastern oak, with the tallest sycamore or walnut atop of it, would not equal the height of one of these giants. Spruces and pines of majestic port standing around look like saplings. They are dwarfed by the company they keep. They look up, but the Sequoias look-not down but out, indifferent to all that is transpiring below them. They see only the limitless reaches of the eternal sky; their meat and drink, the sunshine and the leaf mould; their breath of life, the unwearying winds of heaven.

There were great forests of Sequoias once in central and northern Europe and in mid-continental North America. They stretched away, even to the Arctic circle. This was just before the great climatic Reconstruction Period, when magnolias flourished in Greenland and all the plants and animals of the temperate zone found congenial habitation in near proximity to the North Pole. Then came the Age of Ice, and only those species survived which were able to keep ahead of the glaciers, and establish themselves in regions not overwhelmed by the ice. The rocks of the Tertiary Period preserve the story of these times, and in the pages opened by the geologist's hammer, five distinct species of Sequoia are recorded. "Pressed specimens" indeed, these fossil trees are, two of which are identical with the California trees. The other three species are extinct, and America has the only survivors of the noblest race of plants the world has ever produced. Trenches and ridges in the ground within the Sequoia belt contain the prostrate bodies of former generations of Big Trees. They are not found outside the range. This fact leads John Muir to believe that the area covered by these trees has not shrunken any since the Glacial Period--that Sequoia has held its own for 5,000 to 10,000 years.

The devastation of the Big Tree groves by lumbermen is now checked in a few locations by Government purchase and reservation. The lumber is put to such base uses as shingles and clap-boards and fencing which lesser trees might better supply. It is the vast size and height of these trees, not the market value of the lumber per board foot, that make an acre yield such enormous profit.

Seedling Big Trees grow slowly, and do poorly in the Eastern States. In Europe they are more successful, and are popular everywhere. Weeping forms, which are much grown, originated in a French nursery.

The genus takes its name from Sequoiah, a wise Cherokee Indian, who made an alphabet of his tribal language by means of which the New Testament and a newspaper were published for his people.

Redwood (Sequoia sempervirens, Endl.)--Resinous, aromatic trees, with tall, fluted trunks and short, horizontal branches; 200 to 300 feet high, 12 to 28 feet in diameter. Head small, irregular. Bark thick, red, 6 to 12 inches thick, in ridges 2 to 4 feet wide, checked crosswise, showing brighter, close, inner layer. Wood light, soft, brittle, close, red, easily split, durable, satiny lustre. Buds oval, small, loosely scaly. Leaves of two forms: lanceolate and spreading, or awl shaped and shorter; evergreen, 1/4 to 1/2 inch long. Flowers: monoecious, in late winter, cone shaped, scaly; staminate on erect stems, scales 3-anthered, pollen copious; pistillate with 7 ovules on each scale. Fruit oblong, woody cone, 3/4 to 1 inch long, scales thick and grooved at tip; 3 to 5-winged seeds on each. Preferred habitat, moist, sandy soil. Distribution, southern Oregon on coast range slopes to Monterey County, California. Uses: Most valuable timber tree of Pacific coast; successful in European gardens.

In many characters, the redwood is not different from the Big Tree. Its spreading leaves on the terminal twigs give it a more graceful, feathery spray than do the awl-like blades of the other. The pistillate flowers have fewer scales, and the buds are scaly. The cones are smaller, and the seeds have more vitality. The redwood is only a trifle under the Big Tree in size, sometimes overtopping the highest of them, and reaching 400 feet. But the trunks are not so massive, and these trees average smaller than their cousins. In beauty the redwood is first; the lustrous leaves, the ruddy bark, and the gracefully curving branches of trees still in their prime will halt the passing stranger and compel his wonder and admiration. The forests throng with young trees in every stage of growth, showing that Nature left to herself would multiply and extend the range of this species. But the wood is beautiful, and light and easily worked. It is admirable in building, and durable beyond most woods. It receives a satiny polish, and it lasts indefinitely in the ground.