228 THE SEQUOIAS 



itself without aid; or it can be aided by planting seeds or 

 growing trees in a nursery and transplanting them into the 

 forest in their natural habitat. Probably no effort will be 

 made to restore it where cut off unless the task is under- 

 taken by the United States Government or the State of 

 California. It is not known what, if anything, has been 

 done in that line. 



REDWOOD : /Sequoia sempervirens 



HERE is another mighty giant of the forest. While it does 

 not grow to as great a diameter as the Big Tree it excels it 

 in height. Trees from two hundred and fifty to three hun- 

 dred feet high and from eight to twelve or even fifteen feet 

 in diameter, immediately above the swelled base, are not 

 uncommon, while old and exceptionally large ones have been 

 found from three hundred and twenty-five to three hundred 

 and fifty feet high and twenty feet in diameter. Old trees 

 are clear of limbs for eighty to one hundred feet in dense 

 forests. It has the habit, possessed by no other valuable 

 species of conifer, of sending up sprouts from its roots that 

 will grow into valuable timber for the saw. When growing 

 in the open, trees up to fifteen inches in diameter show a 

 narrow, regular, conical crown from the ground up, the 

 lower limbs drooping, the middle ones nearly horizontal, 

 and the upper ones slanting upward. Being light-demand- 

 ing, the lower limbs, if in a dense or approximately dense 

 stand, die and drop off. In old age the whole crown is 

 changed, and a few straggling branches extend far out and 

 the crown becomes irregular, open, and sometimes rounded. 



Its natural range is a belt along the Pacific Coast from 

 southwestern Oregon to Santa Cruz, in California. The 

 greatest width of the belt does not exceed thirty, and at 

 some points not over ten miles. Its greatest development is 

 in Mendocino, Del Norte, and Humboldt counties, California, 

 where it may be found along the valleys and against the 

 mountain-sides, but nowhere more than 2800 feet above the 



