Climb me
Deciduous trees have such beautiful limb structures. This one made me want to stop and climb it.
Today’s passage from The Wild Trees is about a recognized giant sequoia, the General Sherman. I suspect that this is far from the largest tree known, but botanists have a tradition on not revealing the location of rare plants and trees. One of the unidentified groves of coastal redwoods discussed in the book makes the General Sherman seem small. We live with secret giants in our midsts!
At present, the world’s largest living thing is a giant sequoia named General Sherman. It is 275 feet tall; it is a very tall tree. Even so, the General Sherman is more than one hundred feet shorter than the tallest coast redwood. If the wood in the General Sherman were to be cut into foot-wide planks an inch thick, and the planks were laid end to end, they would stretch for 125 miles. – Richard Preston
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Of course, the quote about cutting up and planking the tree is why the stands of really rare and huge trees stay secret….
As a denizen of the north country, i love the skeletal look of deciduous trees…it’s like getting to peek into their secret lives. And of course to watch them reawaken in the spring is as profound a statement on Life as there is.