The largest living-The General Sherman Tree!
These are one of the largest things to ever exist on our planet, the most amazingly engineered wonders worth watching once in a lifetime! The Giant Sequoias. Climate change and overloading made them disappear once. These huge giants live for thousands of years and have evolved to survive forest fires, due to their humongous size in thickness and tallness each one has a specific name of its own like a celebrity the largest one is called General Sherman!
A thick giant Sequoia named the general grant holds the record for the largest diameter which is 8.8 meters. But the record of the most massive tree on earth goes to the general Sherman tree, its cousin with a diameter of 7.7 meters and a height of 84 meters(275 feet) claims the undisputed title, estimated to weigh about 2000 tons, Some of the oldest giant sequoias were about 1000 years old already before the Roman empire, but due to heavy logging of wood the reign of giant sequoias was limited from North America and Europe in the ice age period to just parts of California!
Paleobotanic evolution ā
The conifer tree species of the subfamily Sequoioideae were once widespread along the northern hemisphere. Fossil remains of the genus Sequoia from the Jurassic Period (180 to 135 million years ago) have been found in North America, Greenland, and the Eurasian continent, suggesting vast forests.
Only three species survived the Ice Ages: the giant sequoia (Sequoiadendron giganteum) and the coast redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) in California and the dawn redwood (Metasequoia glyptostroboides) in remote areas in Southwest China.
THE DISCOVERY ā
The earliest known written reference to the giant trees in California was made in 1833 by an expedition of hunters. This was found in the diary of the explorer J. K. Leonard. This discovery was not publicized, yet! In 1850 John M. Wooster would have carved his initials in the bark of a tree in the Calaveras Grove but again, this received no publicity.
The first certain and widely documented sighting of the giant sequoia took place in the spring of 1852. A hunter who was chasing a bear in the Sierra Nevada mountains entered the woods now known as āNorth Groveā in Calaveras State Park!
In the above picture, the old sequoia is portrayed first seen by Augustus T. Dowd, and was named āThe Discovery Treeā. After withstanding storms and forest fires for many centuries, in 1852 the tree encountered a western man. A year later the tree was felledā¦
It took five men and 22 days (sketch on the left) and after counting the tree rings it appeared that this tree was 1300 years old. The remaining stump was used as a dance floorā¦
Due to limited consciousness and awareness about the long-term effects of cutting giant trees on ecosystems was less among people as compared to today and therefore there was more logging at that time and lesser preservation, leading to a limitation of sequoias forest cover today!
Choice of the name Sequoiadendron ā
Because the species was not known by botanists before 1852, this plant species was not described scientifically. In 1852 Albert Kellogg of the California Academy of Sciences received some branches from the newly discovered Calaveras Grove. Reportedly there were no cones or flowers, so Kellogg wanted to postpone describing the species a little longer until he had a full collection of plant parts. He was planning to call the tree Washingtonia gigantea, in honor of the first president of the U.S.
Highly competitive Giants ā
One fine observer may observe why not these giants out competition drains the resources required by the other trees around them and kill them but it is not the case they are quite a humid climate-loving species ideally in mountains at altitudes between 1000 and 2000 meters at lower altitudes they become susceptible to parasites and fungus secondly they also require loads of nutrients from the soil ā
Soil preference ā is acidic, loamy, moist, sandy, and drained clay!
These giants over time have developed resistance to forest fires so they use this technique against other plants! After surviving the forest fire due to the giant stature of these trees they immediately drop their seeds, before any other plant even grows resulting in the entire area of giant sequoias! Botanists have observed this phenomenon more of as a survival instinct of the plant to unbearable conditions like draught etc. Currently, they are only abundant in the Sierra Nevada range in California.
Can you grow a giant sequoia?
The answer is: yes you can, provided youāre living in a temperate climate zone.
The image above shows a cone of a Belgian redwood, the giant sequoia of Esneux, which is largely bigger than the cones of trees with a girth below 6 to 7 m (about 20 feet).
The giant sequoia is monoecious, which means that the male and female parts are located on the same tree. So for pollinated, viable seeds you only need one tree, itās not necessary that there are other giant redwoods in the immediate neighborhood. It can take only a couple of years to a number of decades before a giant redwood starts producing cones.
Sowing ā
The first step is of course! To get the seeds! And place-specific, altitude loving remember!!
Before sowing, it might be useful to place the seeds for a couple of days to a couple of weeks in the fridge. When you sow them at last and place them in a warm place (like on the radiator of your heating system), the seeds āthinkā winterās over and the time to germinate has come.
The seeds must not be in (intense) contact with the moist soil, so you need to press them softly into the compost. The seeds are quite susceptible to drought. You can put a glass plate or some plastic foil over the pot, but you have to be careful not to kill them by making things too wet. Small germinated sequoias die rather easily because of overwatering.
To keep the ground moist but not wet, itās ideal to use a garden sprayer instead of a watering can.
You can sow them all year round but by only region-specific requirements of sequoias!
How Much time does it take to germinate?
Giant sequoia seeds have a very low chance of germinating. If a few from some 20ā50% seeds only germinate. The seeds germinate at the earliest a couple of days after sowing, but still can after months. Donāt think things will not work out: patience is a virtue
When a seed germinates, the first thing you see is a tiny, rhubarb-colored stem, loop-shaped. After a couple of days, the plant erects itself and the dried seed skin falls off (if it does not look like itās going to do that by itself, you could help a little bit). You see four seed leaves, although there can be three or five as in the image above!
Existence in danger!
With ancestors dating back to the Jurassic era, some of the trees that now grow along Californiaās Sierra Nevada Mountains have been alive for thousands of years, bearing witness to most of human history.
But a couple of hundred years of human encroachment on the sequoiasā habitat, combined with the climate crisis, increasingly intense wildfires, and drought have threatened the speciesā future. The last of the worldās most massive trees now live on just 73 groves scattered across the Sierras. Most lie within protected national parks such as Sequoia national park, where visitors flock from around the world to marvel at General Sherman, the worldās most massive tree.
Interestingly in 2019, a conservation group had struck an unusual deal to acquire the last, largest privately owned sequoia grove. The deal is the result of two decades of discussions between the not-for-profit conservation group Save the Redwoods and the Rouch family, which has owned the 530-acre Alder Creek grove since before the second world war. The forest is home to hundreds of sequoias, including the Stagg Tree which ā at more than 240ft tall and 100ft around ā is the fifth-largest in the world.
Latest estimates tell that there are only 75,000 giant circles were left in the Sierra Nevada California. Although giant sequoias rely on wildfires to thrive and spread their seeds decreasing number is alarming! For us to witness such gigantic wonders of nature which outlive us 1000 times, they first need to exist while we acknowledge their presence and learn from them!
