The Firs With these noble dimensions there is a richness and symmetry and perfection of finish not to be found in any other tree in the Sierras. The branches are whorled, in fives mostly, and stand out from the straight red-purple bole in level, or on old trees, in drooping collars, every branch regularly pinnated like a fern frond, and clad with silvery needles, making broad and singularly rich and sumptuous plumes.
The flowers are in their prime about the middle of June; the staminate, red, growing in crowded profusion on the under side of the branchlets, giving a rich colour to nearly all the tree; the pistillate, greenish yellow tinged with pink, standing erect on the upper side of the topmost branches; while the tufts of young leaves, about as brightly coloured as those of the Douglas spruce, push out their fragrant brown buds a few weeks later, making another grand show.
"The cones mature in a single season from the flowers. When full grown they are about 6 to 8 inches long, 3 to 4 inches in diameter, blunt, massive, cylindrical, greenish grey in colour, covered with a fine silvery down, and beaded with transparent balsam, very rich and precious looking, standing erect like casks on the topmost branches. If possible, the inside of the cones is still more beautiful. The scales and bracts are tinged with red and the seed wings are purple with bright iridescence."— John Muir.
A variety, Shastensis, Lemm., of A. magnifica, is distinguished from the type species only by the yellow bracts that protrude and partially cover the scales of the cones. This form inhabits high elevations in the region of Mount Shasta and also occurs at the lower end of the Sierra Nevada range.
Trees of great size and age, resinous, aromatic. Leaves evergreen, alternate, of two shapes. Flowers in solitary cones, minute, moncecious, axillary. Fruit a pendant woody cone; seeds 5 to 7 under each scale.
KeY TO SPECIES A. Leaves minute, ovate, usually compressed, buds naked; fruit biennial. (S. Wellingtonia) BIG TREE AA. Leaves mostly linear, or lanceolate, spreading, 2-ranked; buds scaly; fruit annual. (S. sempervirens) REDWOOD The Big Tree (Sequoia Wellingtonia, Seem.)—A pyramidal tree when young, becoming round-topped; 275 to 325 feet high; diameter 20 to 35 feet; fluted trunk. Bark reddish brown, fibrous, fluted; I to 2 feet thick. Wood red, soft, coarse, light, weak, durable. Buds naked. Leaves ovate, acuminate, spreading at tips, inch long. Flowers: moncecious, terminal, conical, scaly,
profuse in late winter; staminate with broad scales and abundant pollen; pistillate with 25 to 40 needle-tipped scales, with 3 to 7 ovules under each. Fruit dark red-brown woody cone, biennial, 2 to 31 inches long, with thickened tips; seeds 3 to 7 under each scale, each 2-winged, small, light, eaten by squirrels. Preferred habitat, rich woodlands. Distribution, narrow area on western slope of Sierras in California. Uses: Most majestic tree in the world. Rare and dwarfed in cultivation. Lumber used for shingles, fencing and in general construction.
Sir Joseph Hooker and Asa Gray sat with John Muir around a campfire on Mount Shasta, and talked about the great forests of the Sierras they had just visited. Comparing them with Old World forests, they agreed upon this statement: "In the beauty and grandeur of individual trees, and in number and variety of species, the Sierra forests surpass all others." Conifers are supreme in these forests and among conifers Sequoia is king. Of the two species, the Big Tree, S. Wellingtonia, stands first, and the redwood second.
The Old World has some trees of surprising girth and indefinite age—oaks, chestnuts, sycamores, and cedars of Lebanon—each with its history, the pride of the country it grows in. But these trees are derelicts—throwing out a wisp of foliage here and there, a truce to death, with each returning spring. The lime tree of Nurnberg and the chestnut at the foot of Mount /Etna are each famous; but these trees, with their tops dead and gone years before they were pronounced dead, their trunks honeycombed with decay, and leaning upon props and pillars, are scarcely to be compared with trees, hale, lusty-crowned, whose fluted trunks are a unit, and sound as a nut from the heart out. Granting a greater girth, if you please, to a few of these senile trees, and a greater height to one Eucalyptus that grows in Australia, we can truthfully declare that, excepting these, the Sequoias lead the world, past and present, in height and calibre. No other tree combines such massiveness of trunk with such height. And there is no doubt but that in age they can take rank with the oldest, for competent authorities estimate the age limit to be above 5,000 years. Muir thinks that some living trees have reached that age. Stumps now standing show 4,000 annual rings.