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AMERICAN FORESTRY ASSOCIATION, 



149 



peculiar. It is found only in a narrow 

 strip, closely hugging the Pacific Coast, 

 and extending southward from the south- 

 ern part of Oregon through Northern 

 California nearly to the Bay of San Fran- 

 cisco. It is practically extinct in regions 

 further south, where it doubtless existed 

 not many centuries ago, and there are 

 not more than about 1,000 acres of these 

 trees in Oregon. So it will be seen the 

 present habitat is limited. 



The densest forests are found in Hum- 

 boldt County, where the Redwood strip, 

 which includes the westernmost of the 

 coast ranges, averages ten to twelve miles 

 in width. The greatest breadth is in 

 Mendocino County, where it extends for 

 twenty miles. Its entire habitat is a re- 

 gion of heavy rainfall in the Winter, and 

 of fogs which sweep in from the Pacific 

 at all seasons of the year. It is a very 

 moist, temperate region. Both of these 

 conditions seem to be essential to the 

 growth of the species. 



Redwood is so called because of its 



color, which, when freshly cut, is a 

 bright, though not deep, red, changing 

 to a brown-red when thoroughly sea- 

 soned. The wood is soft, with a rather 

 coarse, straight grain. It is easy to work, 

 quite as much so as our Eastern White 

 Pine. It contains practically no resin, 

 but a large amount of water, which makes 

 the green wood so exceedingly heavy 

 that often the lower log of a tree will sink 

 in water. 



Botanically, the Redwood {Sequoia 

 sempervirens) is a brother of the big trees 

 {Sequoia gigantea) of the Sierra Nevada, 

 the two species being the sole living rep- 

 resentatives of the genus Sequoia. It is 

 a cousin of the Cedars, which it resem- 

 bles in many respects, in habit and ap- 

 pearance, in bark and foliage. It is an 

 immense tree, larger than the Fir of 

 Washington, but not as large as the Big 

 Tree of the Sierra. It often attains a 

 height exceeding three hundred feet and 

 a butt diameter of fifteen feet. It rarely 

 branches low, but almost invariably 



COURTESY OF 



NATL. GEOGRAPHIC MAO. 



REDWOOD LOGS LOADED FOR SHIPMENT. 



