California Giant Redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) Photo by Bernt Rostad on Flickr, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0&gt;, via Wikimedia Commons

Dear Readers, when you’re trying to photograph California Redwoods (Sequoia sempervirens) it presents something of a problem. How can a photograph possibly do justice to a tree that, at its largest, can be 380 feet tall, 29 feet in diameter and can live to be 2000 years old? Well, lots of people have tried, but I honestly think you need to be standing next to one to really appreciate that these are not just any old tall trees.

Photo by Tim Waters, taken at Big Basin Redwoods State Park, California (https://www.flickr.com/photos/tim-waters/5524503526/)

However, the history of the California Redwood is not a happy one. Beloved of loggers they have been cut down until they survive naturally  in only a few isolated patches of the California coast. Although they actually need forest fires in order to reproduce, changes in forest management and the increasing frequency and ferocity of the conflagrations means that the redwood seedlings that germinate following a fire are quickly crowded out by other plants.

Interestingly, although the California Redwood is a mighty fine tree, the largest tree by volume in the world is the Giant Redwood (Sequoiadendron giganteum). It isn’t as tall, but ‘General Sherman’, a tree living in the Sequoia National Park in California has a diameter of over 37 feet. It is subject to the same problems as the California Redwood, and is even longer lived (given the chance) – the oldest known individual is over 3,000 years old. It’s thought that the tannin in the bark helps to give protection against pests and fungal diseases.

General Sherman (Photo by By Clementp.fr – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=133084171)

Now, the Victorians get the blame for a lot of things (Japanese Knotweed, Giant Hogweed) but they did plant a lot of California Redwoods and Giant Redwoods on their estates, and for once this has proved to be a good thing, because the trees appear to be thriving, just as they are under threat in their native ranges. About half a million Giant Sequoias have been planted since the 19th century, along with vast numbers of California Redwoods. A recent report in New Scientist suggests that the trees are doing every bit as well in the UK as they did at home in California, sequestering an estimated 85 kg of carbon every year, and apparently loving our more stable climate. The author of the report, Matthias Disney of University College London, does point out there’s no current evidence of the trees reproducing – maybe their need for fire in order to germinate might be a bit tricky to, well, reproduce. Disney also wants to look at the relationship between the redwoods and the native ecosystem to see what impact, if any, the trees have.

General Sherman being wrapped in fire protective material before a forest fire reaches it – the danger is that flames penetrate some of the fissures in the bark, causing damage (Photo by By Elizabeth Wu, National Park Service – https://npgallery.nps.gov/AssetDetail/0c58fd17-f4fe-4f43-a4d0-83cae496f019#, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=129955141)

Interestingly (and I feel a mini-trip coming on) there is an avenue of Giant Redwoods in Edgware, on the approach to the North London Collegiate School – the school was once a fine country house, and the trees were planted in 1910. Paul Wood (of London’s Street Trees fame) says that they are doing extremely well, and if you’re a North Londoner and fancy a trip they’re on Canons Drive. Wood reports that there is also a younger group of Giant Redwoods in Kilburn (Fernhead Road and Kilburn Lane) – these have apparently been planted right into the pavement, not into a verge as in the case of the Edgware trees, but they seem to be doing fine. So you don’t have to go to Kew, or to Scotney Castle (where the tallest redwood in the UK can be found, 55 metres tall) to see these magnificent trees. Turns out, they’re everywhere! Long may they prosper.