A bill naming the redwood as California’s official state tree was approved on April 3, 1937. But Californians weren’t content with having the world’s biggest living thing as their state tree. They later adopted the second biggest thing as well!
The term “redwood” includes both the coast redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) and the Sierra big tree (Sequoia gigantea). In 1951, the State Attorney General ruled that both were official state trees. In 1953, the Legislature amended the law to include the names of both species.
The tallest recorded tree is a 364-foot coast redwood in Humboldt County known as the Founders Tree. How big is that? Imagine lining four blue whales up!
The largest sequoia is the General Sherman Tree in Sequoia National Park. This Sierra big tree is as wide as a big blue whale (101½ feet) one hundred feet above the ground! But it’s only 272 feet high. This tree is estimated to be between 3,000 and 4,000 years old. The 267-foot high General Grant Tree, also in Sequoia National Park, is known as “the Nation’s Christmas Tree.”
Redwoods are conifers, or evergreen trees, belonging to the family Taxodiaceae. Their branches bear downward extending needles, or leaves, and small, oval cones. Their wood is light, soft, coarse-grained, and durable. Redwood bark is thick and spongy and is remarkably resistant to fire and disease. So why are they disappearing?
Ancient Tales
Millions of years ago, redwoods were common throughout the Northern Hemisphere. As the climate cooled, they retreated. The coast redwood is now nearly restricted to California, where it grows in “fog belts” of the coastal range. Sierra big trees grow in the Sierra Nevada (mountains) from about 3,500 feet to 8,450 feet.
The name sequoia was inspired by a great Cherokee Indian leader named Sequoyah. It’s a bit odd, considering Sequoyah was born on the opposite side of the continent. He gained fame by inventing a “Cherokee alphabet.”
It’s said that Indians referred to the white man’s paper as “talking leaves,” for the words that were written on it. If leaves on 4,000-year-old Sequoias could talk, what a story they might tell!
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