Tiemann 



What are the Most Remarkable Trees? 



177 



Henry D. Tiemann 



What are the Most Remarkable Trees? 



Published with the pubhshcr's and author's 

 permission from The Southern Lumberman, 

 December 15, 1950. 



AGE AND SIZE OF TREES 



Draw a line ten inches long and 

 mark off one quarter of an inch at the 

 final end. Let the length of line repre- 

 sent the time in years of the life of 

 living redwood trees (say 3,000 years); 

 then the quarter-inch represents the 

 span of a human life of 75 years. These 

 trees living today were a thousand years 

 old when Jesus of Nazareth was on 

 earth— all of which is, of course, trite 

 and has been said again and again; but 

 it is nevertheless impressive to pause 

 long enough to get a graphic picture of 

 what this means. 



Geologically sequoias are very old. 

 In the Miocene period, the age when 

 forests reached their maximum de- 

 velopment some million years ago, they 

 extended over most of the northern 

 hemisphere, and as far south as Tas- 

 mania. The present King William pine 

 {Athrotaxis selaginoides), endemic to 

 Tasmania, closely resembles redwood, 

 especially in color and properties of 

 the wood, and is apparently a relic of 

 the early species. Moreover, the meta- 

 sequoia, recently discovered in the 

 mountains of northern China, long 



thought to be extinct, is another relic 

 of this ancient race of trees. 



But there are other trees, perhaps 

 even older than the redwoods. One is 

 the bristlecone pine {Pinus aristata) 

 which is estimated to be 4,600 years 

 old. Still another ancient tree was the 

 "Dragon Tree" of Orotavo in the Ca- 

 nary Islands, destroyed by storm in 

 1868. This tree [Dracaena draco) of the 

 lily family is of slow growth, but was of 

 gigantic size of trunk. Von Humboldt 

 gave its diameter in 1799 as 16 feet, 

 several feet above the roots. In the 15th 

 century an account gives the diameter 

 as 12 feet, at 10 feet above the ground. 

 (See picture in Strasburger's Text 

 Book of Botany, p. 541.) 



The historic Italian chestnut tree 

 "Castagno dei Cento Cavalli" at the 

 foot of Mt. Etna in Sicily, portions of 

 which are still living (sec article in 

 Southern Lumberman, Christmas Is- 

 sue, 1949, 'The Lamented Chestnut") 

 may have been several thousand years 

 old. A much-gnarled Western juniper 

 tree in the U. S. Cache National For- 

 est has been estimated as 3,000 years 

 old. (See Southern Lumberman, De- 

 cember 15, 1940, for illustration.) No 



