7. Coast Redwood

Specimen Size: 120ft tall, 57.5in in diameter.

Location: North and east of Anderson Hall in front of the Winkenwerder Forest Laboratory.

Historical Background: Coast Redwood lumber is highly valued because it is attractive, light weight, and decay resistant. It is also fire resistant because it has relatively low resin content. It was commonly used as railroad ties and trestles throughout California, and wood from burls formed by this species is prized for the production of table tops and veneers. The world’s tallest living organism is a Coast Redwood in Redwood National Park in northern California. Indigenous communities with traditional territories along the California coast like the Yurok and Chumash use the wood for canoes, houses, furniture, and as ceremonial tools. 

Non-Native to PNW

Native Range: Central and Northern California coast

Identifying Features: A member of the Sequoia clan, this tree exhibits the size and grandeur associated with the name of “redwood”. This specimen, although quite large compared to many of the trees on this tour, is a mere fraction of the size of the largest of its kind, which can reach a staggering 200-325’ in on average at mature height. The tallest however go even further, with the largest known being an enormous 397’ (115m) in height! The diameter, while not as huge as its relative the Giant Sequoia, can still reach an impressive 15’ (4.6 m) in diameter. The tree is not grand simply for its size, it is also beautiful, with deep red-brown bark in long fibrous strips surrounding a trunk which supports a thick crown of evergreen needles dark green above and lighter green below (although not as significantly so as the similar looking Pacific Yew tree which is a native of Washington state). The boughs are often drooping and sometimes don’t appear for dozens or perhaps even hundreds of feet up the tree. Older specimens can be as much as 2200 years old, but an intense campaign of logging since european colonization has led to a monumental decrease in the extent of old growth redwood habitats, which are now limited to a very small area of the Northern California coast and are not all protected to this day.

Identifying Features In Depth:

1. Form: Immensely tall with high apical control and a distinctive pyramidal to cylindrical shape, with a thick canopy often beginning far up the tree. Trunk is very buttressed at the base, often with large round swellings called burls that may produce sucker growth that can grow into full sized trees. Crown is short and often narrow, with irregular horizontal to drooping branches.

2. Leaves: Evergreen and needlelike, unequal in size but less than an inch in length (10-19mm), usually flat or slightly curved with dark green tops and whitish green bottoms. Leaves grow horizontally out of the branches spreading in two disting rows like that of Pacific Yew or the Grand fir (though the leaves of the redwood are often much shorter than the needles of those two). Leaves on leaders are scalelike and concave wrapped around the twig and giving way to it over time.

3. Bark: A deep rich reddish brown, growing in thick fibrous strips deeply furrowed to form immensely broad scaly ridges. The inner bark when exposed is cinnamon in color.

4. Reproductive Bodies: These trees can produce small (1.5” or 3cm ) cones of elliptical shape and reddish brown color, composed of many short pointed scales. They hang down at the end of twigs and contain between 2 and 5 seeds which are winged and light brown in color. New growth can also appear in the burls or from the roots, leading to a ring of clone trees growing around the site where formerly a single individual produced them from the base.