3154 



SEQUOIA 



SEQUOIA 



gigantea, DC. (S. Wettingtonia, Seem. S. Washing- 

 tdnia,Sudw.). CALIFORNIA BIG TREE. Fig. 3612. Tree 

 150-325 ft. high, with trunk 10-30 ft. in diam.: crown 



Byramidal on young trees, rounded at summit or much 

 roken in age: branches pendulous, cord-like: Ivs. scale- 

 like, y%-Y<$&.. long, sharp-pointed, adherent to the st. 

 which they thickly clothe, the tip free: cone ovoid, 

 2-3% in. long, l%-2 in. broad, opening only slightly, 

 maturing the second summer, persistent; scales 25-45; 

 seeds oblong or somewhat ovate, wing-margined, 2J^-3 

 lines long. Western slopes of Sierra Nevada. C. L. A. 

 7:364. G.C. III. 27:374; 34:401. G.F. 10:515 

 (adapted in Fig. 3612). R.H. 1913, p. 55. J.H. III. 

 67:348. G.W. 2, p. 195; 3, p. 77; 6, p. 397; 13, p. 331. 

 Reproduces in nature only by seeds. As usually 

 grown the trunk is clothed to the ground with short 

 slender up-curved branches, making a very ornamental 

 tree, but in mature native specimens the -trunk is clear of 

 limbs up to 80-200 ft. Var. pendula, Hort. WEEPING 

 BIG TREE. A form in which the branches are strongly 

 recurved, closely covering the st. and producing a nar- 

 row cylindric effect similar to that of Italian cypress. 

 Originated in Eu. and prop, by grafting upon normal 

 S. gigantea. G.C. III. 31:388. R.H. 1906, p. 395. Var. 

 glauca, Hort. Foliage bluish green; said to be of slow 

 growth- HARVEY MONROE HALL. 



The sequoias. 



The two great sequoias of California have a place of 

 their own in science, history, and literature. Haenke, 

 the botanist of the Malaspina expedition of 1791, first 

 collected S. sempervirens, the coast redwood of Cali- 

 fornia. Four years later Menzies, of the 

 Vancouver expedition, secured speci- 

 mens near Santa Cruz. Lambert pub- 

 lished it in 1824 as Taxodium 

 sempervirens. Douglas re- 

 ferred it to the same group, 

 but in 1847 Endlicher 

 created the separate 

 genus Sequoia. 



3611. Sequoia sempervirens. 



Two living sequoias, S. sempervirens and S. gigantea, 

 are all that remain of many species that flourished in 

 Tertiary times over a large part of the northern hemi- 

 sphere. More than forty fossil species have been dis- 

 covered, but there is still much confusion in regard to 

 the botany of the extinct kinds. They have been found, 

 however, from Italy north to Spitzbergen, and across 

 northern Asia. Several now extinct species, such as 

 S. angustifolia, S. Heerii, and S. Langsdorfii, grew in 



California and Oregon in Miocene tunes. Asa Gray and 

 others have told the story of the rise and fall of this 

 great family of conifers, which was once as abundant as 

 any tree-group in the world, but was cut off, swept 

 away, destroyed by the glacial age, and survived only 

 in parts of California. The S. sempervirens seems to be a 

 descendant of the fossil S. Langsdorfii; S. gigantea 

 appears related to the fossil S. Sternbergii. The famous 

 petrified forest of Arizona was a species of Sequoia, 

 according to the United States Geological Survey. 

 These Arizonian giants which grew millions of years 

 ago, went down under a permanent ocean, were cov- 

 ered with sandstone, and rose again with the present 

 continent. In like manner vast periods of time lie 

 between the present forests of sequoias and their 

 ancient representatives. The value and interest of 

 these wonderful trees are greatly increased by reason 

 of then 1 botanical and historical importance. 



At the present time the coast redwood occupies only 

 a narrow belt of country near the Pacific Ocean, nor is it 

 continuous even there; the giant redwood, or Cali- 

 fornia big tree, exists only in a few small and isolated 

 groves, scattered over less than 60 square miles in 

 all, extending along the western side of the Sierra 

 Nevada range. Compared with the enormous terri- 

 tory once occupied by now extinct species of sequoia, the 

 modern representatives of this ancient and honorable 

 family are reduced to a very small area. 



The first-known of the sequoias, and much the more 

 valuable species, economically speaking, was S. sem- 

 pervirens, the coast redwood of California. This is one 

 of the most important timber trees of the world, and its 

 forests, comparatively limited in area, have yielded and 

 are still yielding, the most easily obtained, the most dur- 

 able and profitable fencing and building lumber of the 

 Pacific coast. The reproductive powers of the tree are 

 enormous; no other known conifer so persistently 

 sprouts from the stump, so rapidly makes new forests, 

 or so well resists fire. But it does not thrive farther 

 inland than the limits of the sea-fog, and a large part 

 of the original area covered by this noble tree has been 

 denuded by successive fires and destructive lumbering 

 methods. Small redwood forests occur in Monterey 

 County, but the most southern forests of commercial 

 importance are in Santa Cruz. The belt, broken by the 

 Bay of San Francisco, extends north through Marin, 

 Sonoma, Mendocino, Humboldt, and Del Norte, and a 

 few miles across into the southern borders of Oregon, 

 which state contains about 400 acres of redwoods. The 

 real redwood forests are all contained within a strip of 

 coastlands 450 miles long and rarely more than 20 miles 

 wide. The actual bodies of redwood within this region 

 axe merely a chain of isolated groups separated by 

 clearings or by large areas on which redwoods never 

 grew. A small grove, now practically destroyed, existed 

 fifty years ago on the east side of the Bay of San Fran- 

 cisco, in Alameda County. Well-borers have found red- 

 woou logs in a perfect state of preservation in various 

 parts of the Coast Range far south of where the trees 

 now grow, even to Los Angeles and San Diego, showing 

 that in some former period of greater rainfall and more 

 sea-fog, redwood forests extended much farther down 

 the coast. 



The climate where the redwood thrives is compara- 

 tively equable, marked by fogs and cool summer 

 winds from the southwest. The tree delights in rich 

 sheltered mountain valleys and fertile slopes, in drip- 

 ping fogs and in heavy winter rains. Going east from 

 the ocean, in the redwood region, one suddenly comes 

 to the top of a ridge, to overlook oaks and pines, and at 

 once reaches the plainly marked edge of the S. sem- 

 pervirens forest. 



While S. sempervirens is sometimes called second in 

 size among the giant conifers of the Pacific coast, the 

 tallest tree yet authentically measured is 340 feet high, 

 exceeding in height the tallest living tree of the Sierra 



