Plant
Coast redwood
Sequoia sempervirens
Also known as: Sequoia sempervirens, California redwood
An evergreen conifer in the cypress family (Cupressaceae), native to a narrow coastal strip of northern California and southwestern Oregon — the tallest tree species on Earth. The current record-holder (Hyperion, in Redwood National Park) measures 115.9 meters. Individuals routinely live 1,000–2,000 years; the oldest documented redwood was over 2,500 years old. The species' coastal-fog-dependence makes its global distribution highly restricted, but its narrative weight in American conservation history is enormous.
Scientific
Sequoia sempervirens is one of three closely-related giant conifers in three different genera — alongside the [[giant-sequoia|giant sequoia]] ([[giant-sequoia|Sequoiadendron giganteum]], of the Sierra Nevada interior) and the dawn redwood (Metasequoia glyptostroboides, of central China). The three together are the surviving redwoods; their family was once globally distributed.
Coast redwood maxes out tall rather than wide — typical mature heights 60–100m, several documented over 110m. Hyperion (115.9m) is the current global record-holder. The species depends on coastal fog drip for summer moisture; the narrow distribution band traces the fog-affected [[berkeley|California]]-Oregon coastal zone almost exactly.
The wood is rot-resistant due to high tannin content, which is part of why redwood timber was so extensively logged in the 19th–20th centuries — and why so few stands of old-growth remain (~5% of the pre-logging extent).
Cultural and conservation
The redwoods were central to early American conservation history. The 1918 founding of the Save-the-Redwoods League and the eventual designation of Redwood National Park in 1968 — after decades of John Muir, Madison Grant, and [[berkeley|California]] state-park advocacy — marked some of the foundational battles of American conservation politics.
The Tall Trees Grove and the Avenue of the Giants are pilgrimage destinations for tree-loving visitors from around the world; standing among 1,000-year-old coast redwoods is a frequently-cited spiritual experience in nature-writing and conservation literature.
See also
Auto-generated from this entry’s typed relations: frontmatter, grouped by relation type so the editorial signal isn’t flattened.
- Shares approach with: [[giant-sequoia]] · [[juniper]] · [[dawn-redwood]] · [[totara]] · [[tamarack]] · [[spruce]]
- Member of: [[plants]]
Sources
- Wikipedia — Sequoia sempervirens
- Richard Preston, The Wild Trees (2007)
- Save the Redwoods League
A plant entry in the 0mn1.one [[directory]].
What links here, and how
Inbound connections from across the wiki, grouped by lens and by relationship. These appear automatically — every entity page declares what it links to, and that data populates here on the targets.
Cultural
shares approach with
- Eucalyptus auto-linked from body mention
- Giant sequoia auto-linked from body mention
General
shares approach with
- Dawn redwood auto-linked via shared tag: conifer
3 inbound links · 7 outbound