44 RURAL CALIFORNIA 



grandeur and creative power, this conifer is not it- 

 self the embodiment of California's greatness in trees 

 but only an exponent of it. A sister species, the red- 

 wood (Sequoia sempervirens), of the northern coast 

 region has specimens that are actually taller and 

 have greater area. On the whole, the redwood is in- 

 calculably greater in its service to mankind and it 

 also has the power which no other great conifer pos- 

 sesses, to restore the forest from sprouting stumps. 

 Nor are the "big trees" comparable, in their posses- 

 sion of area and industrial value, with either of sev- 

 eral pines, firs and cedars which attain a stature, 

 bulk and lumbering value in single trees and acre- 

 product beyond the attainment of these species in 

 any other state except in Oregon and Washington. 

 Scientific interest has been centered in the "big trees" 

 as survivors of a genus which in geological time was 

 so wide-flung over the North American continent that 

 it lived 'in Greenland, and yet it has now no living 

 species on the continent except in California. Out 

 of three hundred species of oaks in the whole 

 northern half of the world, California has exclusively 

 for her own fourteen species, of which single trees 

 have achieved world fame in both popular and 

 scientific publications. W. L. Jepson of the Uni- 

 versity of California writes in his "Silva of Cali- 

 fornia": 1 



"Even today scientific knowledge of the forests of 

 California is still in its infancy, although it can now 



1 "The Silva of California," page 9 : by Willis Linn Jepson : 

 Memoirs of the University of California, Vol. 2, Berkeley, Calif., 

 1910. 



