Redwood

The coast redwood, Sequoia sempervirens, is the sole living species of the genus Sequoia in the cypress family. It is a coniferous, long-lived tree that has reached ages of about 2,000 years. The species has produced the tallest living trees on Earth.

The Tree

The bark can be very thick, up to 35 cm, and is quite soft and fibrous. It is bright red-brown when freshly exposed, which gives the redwood its name, and weathers darker. Mature trees normally stand 60 to 100 m tall, with a conical crown and a remarkably straight trunk. The root system is shallow and spreads wide. The thick, fibrous bark protects mature trees from fire, and a damaged tree can sprout new growth from its trunk and burls. Coastal fog provides about 40 percent of the annual water intake of coast redwoods.

Chemistry

Coast redwoods are resistant to insect attack, fungal infection, and rot. These properties come from concentrations of terpenoids and tannic acid in the leaves, roots, bark, and wood. The redwoods also contain little flammable pitch or resin. The main constituents of an essential oil distilled from the needles are alpha-pinene, beta-pinene, delta-3-carene, terpinolene and sabinene.

The Redwood Subfamily

The redwoods are the coast redwood, the giant redwood of California's Sierra Nevada and the dawn redwood of China.

Conservation Context

Before commercial logging and clearing began by the 1850s, the tree occurred naturally in an estimated 810,000 ha along much of coastal California and the southwestern corner of coastal Oregon. Today, coast redwoods occupy a narrow strip of land approximately 750 km in length along the Pacific coast of North America. About 96 percent of the world's old-growth coast redwood forest has been logged, and almost half of what remains is in Redwood National and State Parks. The International Union for Conservation of Nature named the coast redwood an endangered species in 2011. The whole subfamily is endangered.

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