Sequoia

se-kwoi'a, a coniferous tree of California. A gigantic forest tree, possibly the largest in the world. There are two kinds of sequoia. The first, the California redwood, occupies a long, broken strip on the ocean side of the Coast Range. It is limited strictly by the reach of Pacific fogs. It grows to a height of 200 to 400 feet. It is an exceedingly valuable tree. It has supplied California with lumber for several decades. Redwood has been brought eastward for interior finish which reminds one of beautiful cedar or cherry woodwork. When we pause to think of two-hundred-foot trees standing close together with trunks 75 to 100 feet clear of limbs, we realize that such a grove cut into lumber could not be piled on the ground where it grew. No other such lumber-producing forests have been seen before or ever will be seen again. Many redwood trees over 20 feet in diameter and 300 feet in height are still standing. The other sequoia is the California Big Tree, although it is asserted, that, in reality, the redwood is the larger tree. Big trees are found farther from the ocean, but only in a few scattered groves in a belt running north and south for 200 miles along the western slope of the Sierra Nevadas. The general government set aside the Sequoia and the General Grant groves as national parks. The famous Calaveras groves were owned by a lumberman, but, as a result of agitation, the government in 1909 exchanged other timber lands for these groves and added them to the National Forest Reserve. Over 4,000 acres of land and 1,500 giant trees were included in the reservation. A big tree under six feet in diameter is not counted, being a mere sapling. The "Father of the Forest," now down, is estimated to have had a height of 450 feet, and a diameter at the ground of more than forty feet when standing. Big trees reproduce themselves with difficulty. The seed does not grow very well and the stumps do not sprout. There are few young trees. Asa Gray estimated the age of one twenty-four foot tree at 1,600 years. Muir estimated the age of some living trees at 5,000 years, and the stumps of trees felled seem, from a count of the rings of annual growth, to bear out a claim of 4,000 years. At all events these trees contest with Old World cypresses and the Australian eucalyptus for the honor of being the oldest living things on the face of the globe. There is a real danger that they may be exterminated. The name sequoia was given in honor of an Indian chieftain,--the same who invented the Cherokee alphabet.

See Cherokee; Yosemite; California; Muir