The giant sequoia

IS the great Sequoia a tree that dreads tomorrow? This mournful question was raised over a half century ago by prominent naturalists of the period. Imbued with the idea that all living things have their day in this world of evolving forms of life, they were unable to see a future for a tree whose race has played so large a role in the past.

Acquainted with the northern groves where the Sequoias are nearly all aged, they could see in them only pitiful, fast-dwindling stands desperately huddled in patches where environment insured conditions ideal for tree life. This they accepted as evidence that the Sequoia stood at the brink of extinction; that it had outlived its day of vigor and progress, and was but a race in its dotage. The surviving remnants were hardly more than a faint echo of past glory, displaying “the munificence of departing greatness” but expressing, as a race, a blossoming of decadence.

Among the first to sound this note of alarm was Asa Gray. Addressing a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1872, he stated: “The Sequoia gigantea of the Sierra exists in numbers so limited that the separate groves may be reckoned upon the fingers, and the trees of most of them have been counted, except near the southern limit, where they are said to be more copious. A species limited in individuals holds its existence by a precarious tenure, and this has a foothold only in a few sheltered spots of a happy mean in temperature and locally favored with moisture in summer. Even then, for some reason or other, the pines, the firs, and even the incense cedars possess a great advantage and wholly overpower the Sequoia in numbers. Seedlings of the big trees occur not rarely, but in a meagre proportion to those of associated trees; and small, indeed, is the chance that these seedlings will attain to ‘the days of the years of their forefathers.’ The force of numbers eventually wins. Whatever the individual longevity, certain if not speedy is the decline of a race in which a high death rate afflicts the young.

“In the commonly visited groves Sequoia gigantea is invested in its last stronghold, can neither advance into more exposed positions above, nor fall back into drier and barer ground below, nor hold its own in the long run where it is under the present conditions; and a little drying out of the climate of the region, which must have been much moister than now, would precipitate its doom.”

Man, seemingly, has conspired with Nature in bringing the Sequoia under the inexorable law of extinction. He lacks respect for this priceless heritage of earlier ages, for already many of the most magnificent stands of the Sequoia have been logged. If commercialism is allowed to go its wayward way unchecked, posterity will soon be robbed of these last remaining remnants of the forests of the Miocene. Even now man is bringing the age of Mammals to a close. Soon there will be no wild life left except in those spots that are given protection. Outside of these areas, all life will be destroyed save those plants and animals that have been reclaimed from the wild. Then man will stand alone and unchallenged amid the wreck of creation.

Happily, this melancholy cry is not the expression of an actual fact, at least, so far as the Sequoia is concerned. Enough Sequoian tracts have been made safe from the axe to insure the future of the race and to prevent ultimate destruction at the hands of man. Nor is the tree in danger of natural extinction if the salvaged Sequoian tracts reproduce in sufficient numbers to continue the struggle for existence. If this can be proved to a reasonable certainty, then the Sequoia, as a race, is not fated to be without descendants.

Unlike the Redwood of the coast, the great Sequoia of the Sierra does not reproduce by root or stump sprouts, but from seed only. The seeds are in cones exceedingly small for so colossal a tree, being hardly larger than a small egg. These ovule bodies are composed of thirty to forty closely packed, woody, persistent scales, each with four to six seeds at its base. Two years are required for the cone to mature, and by early Autumn of the second year their olive green, purplish color has faded to a dull yellowish brown, the cone has shrunken and the scales parted sufficiently to liberate its seeds to the wind. So insignificant looking are these tiny seeds that few fail to marvel that they should contain the actual germ which produces the largest inhabitant of the world’s forests. But the size of a mustard seed, with membranous disk-like wings, they are so light that they make a sound almost imperceptible to the human ear in their glancing and wavering fall to the forest floor.

Not less impressive is the abundance of these seeds. Over three hundred are contained within each cone. John Muir counted on two ordinary specimen branches over four hundred and eighty cones containing at least one hundred and forty thousand seeds. This led him to state that “millions of seeds are ripened annually by a single tree, and in a fruitful year the product of one of the northern groves would contain enough to plant all the mountain ranges of the world.” Surely, the cone of the Sequoia presses closely upon the classic pomegranate in the number of its seeds and may well be considered the symbol of abundance.

During the droning days of Autumn when the air is freighted with a calm, serious stillness, and a thousand wild creatures are occupied with tasks that fulfill an instinctive provision for a coming want, the squirrels are busy gathering the Sequoia cones, small as they are. Throughout these quiet days the sound of their dropping may be heard and grey-furred bodies may be seen coming down the great red trunks with nervous, jerky vehemence—trunks whose bark has known the tiny feet of others of their voluble kin decades ago. Securing the cones they have cut down with their “ivory sickles,” these diligent little harvesters store them away for winter use. Often forgotten, these cones, buried at the proper depth for germination, become the means of further perpetuating the race of the giants.

Other creatures, too, are laying up provisions for the winter. Birds are amazingly industrious. Some are gathering with much fuss into flocks preparatory for southward flight, while others, with thoughts of chill days to come, are busily searching out every cranny for a morsel of food, mere atoms against the huge, lofty trunks. Blue-jays are indulging in their usual pilfering, making more noise than all the rest of the forest folk combined. Insects also seem unusually active. Happy, gauzy-winged bits of concentrated gayety, they while away their little hours in the mellowed sunshine. Giving no thought to the frosts and short days to come, transitory and carefree, they offer the most tragic contrasts, dancing and humming about the immortal Sequoia.

When winter comes and all is in keeping with the great sleep of the forest, it is blossom time for the Sequoia. For everything else the beauty of life’s expansion is ended. The pines have become funereal in their aspect; the firs have lost their gayety. The underbrush, bowed with the weight of snow, is stripped of its bright leaves. Sear and brown, they lie heaped in hollows where the wailing Autumn winds left them. The flowers, too, are in their graves. The robins are gone. Even streams are silent and buried. But the Sequoia, living an almost enchanted existence, is quite beyond reach of every influence suggestive of winter’s repose. Though all life about it may cease, it must blossom forth. Producing myriads of minute flowers at the ends of branches formed the previous year, it fairly bursts into bloom, dusting the snowy ground, like a gigantic goldenrod, with golden pollen.

Contrasting the prolific abundance of Sequoia seeds with the scarcity of seedlings, it seems logical to conclude that the Sequoia is not reproducing. It is true that seedlings are rare in the northern groves, although seed production there is as great as elsewhere. This has been construed as evidence that the seeds are infertile and bears out the sad prophecy of Asa Gray that the Sequoia is a wan and weary survivor of the Age of Reptiles and has that inferiority about it of all things that go back into the past. Tainted with antiquity, it is supposedly losing its power of reproduction.

The southern groves, however, throw quite a different light upon the question. There reproduction is manifest on every hand. Companies of seedlings are springing up everywhere determined to carry on the noble line. They are found growing not alone in moist glens where the soil is rich and deep, but also on rocky ledges and steep hillsides seemingly bare of all nutriment, some even battling for life with their roots wedged in crevices of granite beds. Exuberant and heavy with an output of green foliage, these monarchs of the future promise anything but an inability to maintain the forest in its most perfect vigor.

The fact that the Sequoias in the northern part of their range show lack of reproduction is not due to a loss of viability of their seeds, but to other causes. Wherever the thick layer of leaf mould is stripped away exposing the mineral soil and the proper amount of sunlight is sifted down, plantations of thrifty seedlings promise renewal of the race. But where the overhead shade is unbroken and the litter on the forest floor undisturbed, the seedling succumbs long before its tiny roots can reach down through the decaying vegetable matter to the soil beneath. In the southern groves where the ravages of the lumber mill and fire have been extensive enough to open up the dense shade, tearing the ground and baring it to the sunlight, the Sequoia has displayed an admirable ability to seed over the desolated areas. But in the northern groves where sunlight and soil conditions are unfavorable to the development of seedlings, reproduction is practically at a standstill.

In the Calaveras Grove Sudworth found a few seedlings “where storm had made an opening in the forest and a ground fire had exposed a little mineral soil. Apparently good use had been made of the first opportunity for reproduction,” he goes on to state, “for young big trees were vigorous in the full enjoyment of the sun.” The same may be said to be true of the Mariposa Grove. Reproduction, as a whole, is always evident when proper conditions obtain, for numberless seedlings may be found growing on spots bared of the forest litter and open to the sun. With continued protection these bid fair to replace the old giants of the present.

It is also of interest to note that seedlings are the exception throughout the Redwood belt. This is not due to sterility of the seeds, but to the same causes which have conspired in Big Tree forests to prevent reproduction. The dense shade and the heavy ground litter present conditions most unfavorable to germination. Indeed, were it not for the Redwood’s unique habit of sprouting shoots from stumps and old roots, they, too, would be as completely splendid in their poverty of young trees as the northern groves of the Giant Sequoia.

The causes, then, of the death of seedlings, especially in the northern parts of the Sequoia’s range, are not, as was first commonly supposed, due to the drying out of the climate, the loss in vitality of the race, or the fact that the Sequoias are being vanquished by competitive and more lusty species. Given favorable soil and light conditions the tree “still possesses that strong inherent reproductive power that permits survival of the fit.”

It is true that the Sequoia has not extended its range since post-glacial time. If it has, the monuments of its extension have remained no more enduring than those left by departed bees and butterflies, for in the gaps between the Sequoia groves, not a root-hole or a trench made by a falling giant has been discovered. The fact that such records are well nigh imperishable, taken in conjunction with their abundant presence in the groves themselves, led John Muir to conclude that their absence outside is indicative of the non-extension of the species beyond its present limits since the glacial period that gave the Sierras their aspect of savage grandeur. Before this epoch, however, it is believed that the Sequoia extended in an unbroken belt along the Sierra and that the present-day gaps mark the paths of these great ice rivers. In fact, wherever the glaciers once wore their bodies into the canyons, the Sequoia is found wanting. And though the tree has not re-united its broken clusters, it has held its own ground against rival species. John Muir took this as evidence that the Sequoia exhibited no decadence since the glacial period.

The unequivocal conclusion to be drawn from these facts is that the Sequoia is in no danger of extinction. It has not lost the original hardihood of its race. Nor is the present but the epilogue of the imposing part it has played in the past—it is the augury of a yet more splendid future awaiting a race whose ancestors reach back into the borderland of the forgotten ages.