The Stems of Plants 



107 



sequoia reaches heights of 

 from 250 to 320 feet above 

 the ground, with extreme 

 trunk diameters of 35 feet. 

 A cypress tree near Oaxaca, 

 Mexico, has a trunk 50 feet 

 in diameter. These trees 

 are the largest and prob- 

 ably the oldest of all living 

 things. The redwood, a 

 near relative of the sequoia, 

 grows in the fog-abound- 

 ing ravines of the Coast 

 Ranges north of San Fran- 

 cisco. Its trunk diameter 

 may be not over 28 feet, 

 but it surpasses the giant 

 sequoia in height. You 

 can better appreciate the 

 size of these trees if you 

 will pace off from an ordi- 

 nary tree a distance equal to 

 the diameter of a sequoia 

 trunk and will calculate 



how many times the height j,^^^, Group oi Bi, Trees (Sequoia smntea) on 

 of the tallest tree in your western slope of the Sierra Mountains, California. 



locality a giant sequoia is, ^/^ '^'\''! '^f' '''' "^^^ \^ ^f f ^ ^^ comparing 



•^ \ ^ them with the man at the left, rormerly se- 



and then try to imagine quoias were widely distributed over the northern 



how a sequoia would look hemisphere, but now they are practically restricted 



. to a fe^w localities in California. 



growing beside it. 



Climbing stems. Among mesophytes are many vines with 

 exceedingly long, slender stems. The Virginia creeper, wild 

 cucumber, poison ivy, and grape have stems 50 to 300 feet long, 

 and usually only a fraction of an inch, or at most a few inches, 



