More on redwoods

I don’t know 1 person who has spent time walking around thru the redwoods, especially the coastal redwoods, without being awe struck in the least, and spiritually moved in the better encounters. My last trip there in 2024 was moving on so many levels, and I will most likely return in 2025 per my preliminary hiking plan.

— photos from May 2024 in Redwoods – opening photo will show in higher resolution —

How appropriate then that a new article and scientific research on our redwoods hit my inbox.

Redwood trees aren’t exclusive to America. There is a species called the dawn redwood (Metasequoia glyptostroboides), which grows in Central China; however, it is by far the smallest of the family, and bears little resemblance to the ones captured on canvas and screen. The great giants we associate with redwoods belong to the other two species: the giant sequoia (Sequoiadendron giganteum) and coast redwood (Sequoia sempervirens), both of which can top 300 feet in height. With the exception of a small region of coast redwoods in Southern Oregon, these species are exclusively found in the state of California.

Redwoods are best known for their incredible height and longevity. The tallest living tree in the world is a coast redwood nicknamed Hyperion, which stands just over 380 feet within Redwood National Park. The largest living tree by volume is also a redwood: a giant sequoia known as General Sherman, located in Sequoia National Park. Both giant sequoias and coast redwoods can live over 2,000 years, explaining their growth. However, height and age records aren’t even the most interesting thing about California’s redwoods.

Sciencing https://www.sciencing.com/1756934/most-unusual-facts-california-redwoods/

I couldn’t help but feel like I was walking with magnificent magical creatures from some far away time or place … the redwoods just ARE and cannot be denied or ignored. What I did not know is how scientifically unique and complex they are – especially again the coastal redwoods.

Plants might not seem as complex as animals when you first consider them, but the coast redwood’s genome is almost nine times larger than that of a human. The Redwood Genome Project was launched by a collective of scientists and conservationists with the aim of unlocking the secrets to the massive trees’ height and longevity. Completed in 2021, the project revealed that the coast redwood genome contains 26.5 billion base pairs of DNA (referring to the four nitrogenous bases of DNA), while the human genome only contains three billion. Even more notable is the fact that coast redwoods have six sets of chromosomes, compared to the two sets found not only in humans, but also in the coast redwood’s cousin, the giant sequoia.

Sciencing https://www.sciencing.com/1756934/most-unusual-facts-california-redwoods/

No wonder they have the power to change the way we think and feel just being around them.