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Sequoia sempervirens (California redwood, Coast redwood)
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Californian redwood in the Strybing Arboretum, San
Francisco Golden Gate Park, USA, which was originally planted in about
1889 [photo H. Robertson, Iziko ©] |
Smaller California redwood (leaves with male
cones, and trunk) in Arderne Gardens, Claremont, Cape Town. [photo H.
Robertson, Iziko ©] |
Native to a narrow fog belt on the west coast of the USA,
extending from Monterey County in California to southern Oregon. The species
holds the record as the tallest living thing on earth with specimens reaching
115.5 m in height.
The tallest recorded specimen is a tree called Hyperion in
the Redwood National Park, California, which is 115.5 m tall. Evidently, the
maximum theoretical height that a tree can grow is 122-130 m, based on
limitations caused by gravity and the friction of water in the vessels. The
widest specimen with a single trunk has a diameter at breast height of 7.2 m
(height 93.6 m). The greatest wood volume measured is for a tree with two
stems called the Lost Monarch, which has an estimated volume of 1203 m3
(see Wikipedia link below for more details). In terms of trunk diameter
and volume, the California redwood is beaten by the related Sequoiadendron
giganteum (Giant sequoia, Sierra redwood), which is also found in
California. The record diameter at breast height of a Giant sequoia is 8.8 m and
the record volume is 1487 m3.
Experimental plots were set up in various forestry areas of
South Africa in the 1920's to test this tree as a suitable timber tree. Of these
trees, the one with the widest girth is a specimen at Harkerville (planted in 1925), which has a diameter at breast height of 160
cm, and which is 33 m tall. The tallest redwood in these experimental plots is
one in the forest at Grootvadersbos, which has a recorded height of 46 m.
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