Is a redwood a pine tree

v its capability to lift matter from the dark thickness of the planet into the uplifted light-filled heights, the Redwood is a celebration of the stature and also majesty of physics incarnation and creation. You are watching: Is a redwood a pine tree

An illustrative case history using the Redwood essence

Redwood tree are ancient giants, the tallest living beings top top the Earth, getting to heights of up to 360 feet (100+ meters).

Redwoods are likewise known for their longevity, frequently 500 – 1000 years, however sometimes an ext than 2000 years. Our modern-day Redwoods, however, room descendents indigenous an even an ext ancient lineage. A hundreds million year ago, in the period of dinosaurs, the primordial Redwoods were predominant in the forests of a much much more moist and also tropical north America. As the climate came to be drier and colder, the Redwoods retract to a narrow strip along the Pacific shore of northern California, whereby summer fog and also mild winters comparison with harsher inland climates.

The modern-day Coast Redwood is Sequoia sempervirens. The types name is Latin definition “forever living” or “forever green.” They space conifers (cone-bearing) gymnosperms (with “naked seeds”), like pines, firs and also spruces, and also keep their eco-friendly needle leaves all year round. Coastline Redwoods belong to the Taxodiaceae tree Family, which additionally includes the two various other surviving Redwood species: the huge Sequoia, Sequoiadendron giganteum, found in the mid-elevations of the central Sierra Nevada mountains of California, and also the Dawn Redwood, Metasequoia glyptostroboides, once thought to it is in extinct, but discovered in a far Chinese sink in 1948.

To walk into a Redwood forest is to get in nature’s cathedral. The Redwood needles kind a dense mat on the woodland floor, limiting understory plants and also other tree growth, particularly in a tires forest. The Redwood trunks with upward, seeking the irradiate far above the forest canopy, above the misty shroud below. In such an environment, it is not tough to imagine the misty primeval forests of old, once the Redwoods reached skyward to look for the pure light of the sun.

The needles the the Redwood also reflect this polarity of dark below and also light above. The lower needles are vast and long, breathing the moist cool wait below.

Up in the sunlit crown that the Redwood, the needles thrive short and also narrow, resembling the needles that cedar or juniper. These leaves make their first appearance farming out that the bark of the upper branches. The scale-like upper leaves room well suitable to the hotter, drier conditions found in the forest canopy.

The dense Redwood bark provides protection against the routine fires that sweep through Redwood forests, frequently clearing out various other trees and also shrubs, leaving the singed Redwoods standing and ready to thrive on because that centuries more.

Some of these fires deserve to actually hole out the reduced interiors that the trunks, with small effect on the remainder of the tree. Together is typical of trees, the life of the Redwood is in the cambium under the bark. As soon as a fire is intense enough to burn all the way around the cambium layer and also kill the tree, its roots, buried in the cool, moist soil, frequently survive and send up brand-new sprouts. Through their shallow roots, regularly anchored in the roots of other trees, Redwoods are much more susceptible come wind 보다 fire, and also can be toppled by fierce winter storms.

Redwoods flower during the late fall or beforehand winter, creating separate male and also female flowers on the exact same tree. The pollen-producing male flowers appears as little yellowish-brown tufts in ~ the finish of the leaves, transparent the tree.

The greenish female flowers, the embryonic cones, show up only in ~ the end of the much upper branches the the tree.

Thus the Redwood relies on the updrafts to carry the pollen as much as fertilize the flowers above. A mature Redwood tree can develop up come 100,000 small (3/4 - 1 customs / 2 cm) hat in a year, every producing approximately 100 seeds. Therefore a single tree may create as numerous as ten million seeds annually.

Although the Redwoods develop millions the seeds, few are fertile, and fewer still room able to develop viable seedlings. Those that execute survive, however, are amongst the fastest growing trees in the world. They can often prosper 30 feet (10 meters) in the an initial 20 years. Brand-new trees are often created from sprouts which kind at the enlarged base of the trunk.

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These sprouts prosper slowly, nourished through the root system and also upper leaves of the “mother” tree. Once the key tree dies, the sprouts room then totally free to prosper as complete trees, developing a “fairy ring” that trees roughly the stump of the early tree. This trees in turn, may give rise to much more sprouts, and also the cycle continues. In that means some Redwoods might be the continuation of trees countless years old.

The dynamic life force of the Redwood is prove in its capability to sprout totality trunks native the next of its main trunk. Although these “reiterated” trunks might originate high over the ground, they thrive upright together if castle were new trees. Dead foliage often collects in ~ the base of these top trunks, i m sorry becomes soil over the decades and centuries, developing an upper ground for various other trees and shrubs to sprout and also grow.

During the past decade, Redwood researchers from Humboldt State university in north California have actually made some exceptional discoveries. Climbing much more than 300 feet (100 meters) up right into the ancient old development Redwood forests, castle have discovered a finish ecosystem the ferns, shrubs and whole trees cultivation high increase in the woodland canopy. These upper forest “epiphytes” include countless fern species, and such trees and shrubs as Tanbark Oak, California Bay, Cascara, Sitka Spruce, Douglas Fir, west Hemlock, Huckleberry, Salal, Elderberry and Gooseberry. Therefore a whole ecosystem resides in the canopy of the Redwood forest, elevated up come the light and warmth, high over the cool, damp mists of the forest floor.

For much more information top top redwood canopy ecology please watch the adhering to web site: What is farming in the Canopies of the Tallest tree in the World?

The Redwood flower essence is make from a mix of the male and female flower twigs, hence embodying the polarity of the dark, moist world below, where just the masculine flowers are found, and also the top light-filled civilization in the forest canopy, whereby we uncover the female, cone-producing flowers.

We can feel in the Redwood significance the features of verticality and reaching increase for the irradiate that us observe in the tree. This is a tree of significant physical vitality, rapid and also massive growth, gravity-defying in its capacity to background water to the heights the its crown, and support not just its own abundant life, however the life of many other species. Through its ability to lift issue from the dark thickness of the planet into the uplifted light-filled heights, the Redwood is a solemn event of the stature and majesty of physical incarnation and creation.