The Biggest Living Things On Earth

By Renie (Szilak) Burghardt

Imagine trees taller than the Statue of Liberty and wider than a greyhound bus. Well, trees like that do exist, and they are the biggest living things on earth. They are called redwoods.

Imagine trees that were seedlings before the birth of Christ, and were already huge at the time Columbus sailed for the new world, or the Vikings sailed for Vineland, and they are still living today. They are called redwoods.

Once upon a time, before the Ice Age made them all but vanish, redwood trees grew throughout the northern hemisphere. They grew in Europe, in China, in the tundra's of the arctic, and among the mountains of New Hampshire. In fact, forests of many kinds of redwoods covered the planet in the age dinosaurs and for millions of years thereafter. Then the Sierra Nevada mountains rose, and the climate in most regions beyond the Sierra Nevada's became too cold for the redwoods. By the onset of the Ice Ages, about a million years ago, they all but vanished from most of the Northern Hemisphere.

Today, these largest living things on earth grow only in two places. On the foggy coastal belt of northern California and southern Oregon, and on a strip in the Sierra Nevada mountain range in central California at elevations of 5,000 to 8,000 feet. There are only 75 groves in the Sierra Nevada mountains and they cover an area 260 miles long and 15 miles wide.

The coastal redwoods are the tallest trees in the world. They are found along a 450 mile strip that runs from southwest Oregon's Checto River south to Salmon Creek in Monterey. This strip, which is only 30 miles wide, covers 2 million acres. These trees grow some 35 miles inland, following the canyons humidity and fog, which is a vital source of moisture for them. Indeed, the mild coastal climate, with its wet winters and cool summers is what the coastal redwoods thrive on. And although they will grow in other conditions, they will never achieve the height and grandeur without their ideal climate.

The coastal redwood's lifespan is 1000 to 1500 years, and they can easily grow to 300 feet. The tallest one of them, located in Redwood National Park and named the "Tall Tree," measures 367.8 feet in height. Imagine climbing a tree like that. You'd find yourself in the clouds, if you ever got to the top. I wonder if birds ever land way up there?

Although the coastal redwoods are the worlds tallest trees, the giant sequoia's exceed it in girth. These ancient giants live on the western slope of the Sierra Nevada mountains in California. They can live 3,500 years and are known as the largest life form on our planet. A giant sequoia can be as tall as a 25 story building, and as wide as a house. Just one sequoia may contain more wood than several acres of prime timberland. The General Sherman Tree, the largest giant sequoia in Sequoia and National Kings Canyon Park, is estimated to weigh 12 million pounds!

The General Sherman is 272 feet tall and has a trunk of 35 feet in diameter and 109 feet in circumference at the base. They say this massive tree contains enough timber to build 120 average sized houses. Its trunk alone weighs 1400 tons, and its age is estimated at 2,300 to 2,700 years.

Yet these mammoth sized trees begin with a seed so small that it takes 5,000 of them to make a pound. These great trees that develop from such small beginnings have the qualities that make them endure. Insects are no menace to the redwoods and forest fires do little damage, because the bark of the redwood is fire-resistant. Their trunks are sheathed in a firewall as much as 2 feet thick, and the wood is slow to ignite. And even after a redwood tree has fallen to the ground, it resists decay for a long time.

One redwood tree trunk found in California had been buried in forest mold for three hundred years, and it still had no signs of rotting in its fibers. The American Museum of Natural History displays a piece of redwood from a tree that had been felled in 1891. This tree was over 1300 years old and exceeded 300 feet in height!

Someone said that the redwoods have a strange air of "other days" about them. And in their majestic presence, man can't help but feel a sense of awe. For man realizes that his own life span is but a fleeting one compared to the redwood's cycle of life. These biggest living things on earth are timeless giants!