The Big Tree and the Redwood 



species, the Sierra forests surpass all others." Conifers are supreme 

 in these forests and among conifers Sequoia is king. Of the two 

 species, the Big Tree, S. Wellingtonia, stands first, and the 

 redwood second. 



The Old World has some trees of surprising girth and indefinite 

 age oaks, chestnuts, sycamores, and cedars of Lebanon each 

 with its history, the pride of the country it grows in. But these 

 trees are derelicts throwing out a wisp of foliage here and there, 

 a truce to death, with each returning spring. The lime tree of 

 Nurnberg and the chestnut at the foot of Mount /Etna are each 

 famous; but these trees, with their tops dead and gone years before 

 they were pronounced dead, their trunks honeycombed with decay, 

 and leaning upon props and pillars, are scarcely to be compared 

 with trees, hale, lusty-crowned, whose fluted trunks are a unit, 

 and sound as a nut from the heart out. Granting a greater girth, 

 if you please, to a few of these senile trees, and a greater height to 

 one Eucalyptus that grows in Australia, we can truthfully declare 

 that, excepting these, the Sequoias lead the world, past and 

 present, in height and calibre. No other tree combines such 

 massiveness of trunk with such height. And there is no doubt 

 but that in age they can take rank with the oldest, for competent 

 authorities estimate the age limit to be above 5,000 years. Muir 

 thinks that some living trees have reached that age. Stumps now 

 standing show 4,000 annual rings. 



It would be great good fortune to visit one of the ten groves 

 of Big Trees once a month and so get the story of the tree's life as 

 the year rolls around. In the late winter the flowers appear, 

 showering the whole region with their golden dust, and tipping 

 the sprays with the pale green fertile flowers by thousands. The 

 cones that follow are small for such a tree, and each scale bears 

 from four to eight seeds at its base. Millions of them are scattered 

 each year, thin, little winged discs, no larger than a baby's 

 thumbnail, looking like half-grown elm seeds. It is incredible 

 that such a tree should have come from such a seed. Not only 

 have they vitality, but some store of nutriment, for the squirrels 

 journey up the trees and cut off the cones in order to put away for 

 winter the little seeds they contain. If fresh cones are falling, 

 you may be sure the squirrels are at work, for the trees hold their 

 empty cones for years. 



It is strange that with such profuse seed production young 



87 



