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Nature's Timeless Giants: Redwoods

© Renie Burghardt

Imagine trees taller than the Statue of Liberty and wider than a greyhound bus. Well, trees like that do exist, and they are the some of the biggest living things on earth. Of course, these trees are the redwoods.

Imagine trees that were seedlings before the birth of Christ, and were already huge at the time Columbus sailed for the new world, or the Vikings sailed for Vineland, and they are still living today.

Once upon a time, before the Ice Age made them all but vanish, redwood trees grew throughout the northern hemisphere. They grew in Europe, in China, in the tundra's of the arctic, and among the mountains of New Hampshire. In fact, forests of many kinds of redwoods covered the planet in the age dinosaurs and for millions of years thereafter. Then the Sierra Nevada mountains rose, and the climate in most regions beyond the Sierra Nevada's became too cold for the redwoods. By the onset of the Ice Ages, about a million years ago, they all but vanished from most of the Northern Hemisphere.

Today, some of these largest living things on earth grow only in two places. On the foggy coastal belt of northern California and southern Oregon, and on a strip in the Sierra Nevada mountain range in central California at elevations of 5,000 to 8,000 feet. There are only 75 groves in the Sierra Nevada mountains and they cover an area 260 miles long and 15 miles wide.

The coastal redwoods are some of the tallest trees in the world. They are found along a 450 mile strip that runs from southwest Oregon's Checto River south to Salmon Creek in Monterey. This strip, which is only 30 miles wide, covers some 2 million acres. These trees grow some 35 miles inland, following the canyons humidity and fog, which is a vital source of moisture for them. Indeed, the mild coastal climate, with its wet winters and cool summers is what the coastal redwoods thrive on. And although they will grow in other conditions, they will never achieve the height and grandeur without their ideal climate.

The coastal redwood's lifespan is 1000 to 1500 years, and they can easily grow to 300 feet. The tallest one of them, located in Redwood National Park and named the "Tall Tree," measures 367.8 feet in height. Imagine climbing a tree like that. You'd find yourself in the clouds, if you ever got to the top. And do you suppose that birds ever land up there?

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