| a
somewhat ill-fated trip to the Giant Forest... |
Brandon
Gallagher |
| Apr
02, 2007 13:32 PDT |
Hey
ENTS,
Last week I had the pleasure being in Sequoia National Forest
for some
work-related research. I was giddy to get up the big trees but
unfortunately it snowed a ton the night before I was visiting so
the
road up the famous ones was closed. I was bummed for a while but
it
turned out to be great...it gave me the opportunity to explore
areas of
the forest I would have likely not gone into otherwise. The
California
redbuds were in full bloom so the south slopes looked like the
Smokies
when the rhodos are out...unbelievably gorgeous! For the big
tree geeks
out there I brought my D-tape (no clinometer, unfortunately) and
measured some remarkable trees.
Largest tree I came across: 54" Incense Cedar. This was the
first of
these I've ever seen in the wild, a very cool stand at about
5000'. Many
of the trees were in this stand were in the 35"+ size
class. It was
dripping snow in pretty large chunks while I was there. I had a
hard
time keeping my camera lens dry!
Down the slope several thousand feet I explored many of the blue
oak
groves (Q. douglasii). These trees were on impossibly steep
slopes that
were a real physical challenge to reach. These slopes were so
steep that
the lowest branches on a 35" tree would be hitting the hill
on the
upslope side! I measure several in the 30+ range with a local
champ of
42". These numbers do not do justice to the massive sizes
these trees
had compared to their neighbors. It was quite a sight to see. I
also
measured several ancient valley oaks (Q. lobata) and interior
live oaks
(Q wislizeni). The largest, respectively, was 40" and
27". Valley oak is
a protected species in central CA, requiring a gov permit to
even
deadwood prune them. For that reason there would be curiously
large
specimen trees in the middle of a Wal-Mart parking lot where
normally
they would be removed. I drove by a grove of valley oaks while
driving
back to LAX that would have dwarfed the trees I had measured
thus far
had I had the time to stop. There's always next time....
I doubt these trees I measured are close to CA state champs
(haven't
looked yet) but it was a great way to occupy a day and still get
to see
some big plants, even though the weren't technically 'giants'!
I'll send
some pix to the website in the next few day...some nice trees
there.
-bg
Brandon Gallagher Watson
Plant Healthcare Specialist
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