Sequoia

In front of the local garden centre there’s a tree you just can’t miss. As Giant Redwoods go ours is a dwarf but it is still pretty spectacular. It would have been much taller by now but it was struck by lightning in 1994 and lost its top. One of the lateral branches “turned north” and took on the job but it has left our tree with an obvious kink in the trunk. I imagined the tree was struck down because it had the temerity to be taller than the church tower, but there is a Sequoia in the churchyard that is taller.  

Of course, redwoods are not native to Europe but were imported from California where there is now a Sequoia National Park that is home to some of the most spectacular and largest living organisms on our planet. They are not considered to be the oldest trees in the world but, when you consider that many of them are clones growing from the roots of their ancestors, perhaps they could be. They can be three thousand years old, 80 metres tall and almost 8 meters across the trunk. 

Driving around the countryside here in the UK you may spot a few more Sequoias. They always seem to be in the grounds of manor houses and stately homes and owning one must have been quite a status symbol among the landed gentry. No doubt the Brampton redwood was part of Olivia Bernard-Sparrow’s estate. The National Trust has quite a few redwoods on its properties and I turned to them to get more information about how the trees first came to Britain. 

The crooked redwood 

In 1852 a man called William Lobb caught wind of the giant trees when in San Francisco and rushed to the Sierras to see them for himself. He immediately recognised the potential commercial value of the tree back in Britain and collected seeds, shoots and cuttings to be cultivated at home. The first baby Redwoods arrived here in 1853. At that point the tree had no official scientific name and a transatlantic squabble arose with the English wanting to call it “Wellingtonia” after the battling Duke while the Americans wanted it to be called “Washingtonia” after their first president. In the end science prevailed, placing the giants along with the coastal redwoods in the Sequoia family. 

Fortunately for the trees’ survival, the timber is too brittle to be of much use in joinery or ship building and so the value lies purely in their magnificence. If you want to experience the wonder of a redwood grove, Anglesey Abbey has some fine ones and the Quaker John Dollin-Bassett planted a grove in Leighton Linslade in the Ouzel Valley (Beds) where redwoods still dominate the skyline today. 

If you meet the tree up close, go and give it a hug. It will take several people holding hands to measure its girth. The largest ones can be 24 meters round. In the process you might notice that the bark is thick, soft and warm, even a bit spongy. My wife, who is American, tells me that another name for redwoods is “punch-bark”. Go on, give it a punch! The soft bark is only a feature of the first three to four metres of the trunk. 

The churchyard redwood.

So, what is the function of it? Anyone who has followed the news in recent years associates California with wild-fires. To resist and even take advantage of fires, the trees have evolved a 30 cm thick fibrous bark that is fire resistant. Fire eliminates the competition and triggers the cones to open, scattering the seeds onto the blackened soil. Even with such an advantage, redwoods do not produce many seedlings in their long lives. 

Being non-native, redwoods don’t host many of our insects or fungi and so their value for wildlife isn’t great. Even so, you may find small birds like goldcrests and blue tits gleaning spiders from among the branches or you may spot crows and pigeons nesting high up. Like all tall trees, Sequoias make good lookout posts for raptors like buzzards and kites but it’s the bark that holds a special ornithological secret. Around the trunk, just out of your reach, you can spot some neat excavations in the bark. These are often made by tree-creepers and they provide a snug hollow to spend the night in. Long tailed tits and other small birds may use them too.

A tree creepers bivouac in soft bark.