Redwoods

[learnteach]

 According to the Guardian, there are more redwoods (coastal and sequoia) in England than in California (500,000 to 80,000)   That doesn't seem right to me,  but I can't find accurate numbers for either place.

The driving factor was a Victorian garden trend (or set of trends).   

The article:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Save_the_Redwoods_League   (Note the prevalence of Woman's clubs (and Garden clubs) in the preservation of habitat.)

Giant Sequoia:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sequoiadendron_giganteum

The Guardian article:   https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/apr/23/giant-redwoods-britain-uk-sequoia-specieswatch

Comments

[cvirtue]

Aha: Victorian fads. That makes more sense.

As for numbers: maybe. The advantage that the UK redwoods have is that they were planted in gardens or preserves, while a bunch of the ones in CA no doubt have grown where people wanted to cut them down and put in buildings.

Pursuing this is fascinating

[learnteach]

(ADHD ratholes)
In England, the Kew Gardens (Premier world herbarium) and the ??English Gardening Society?? have records. In America, the National Forestry Service doesn't count trees. It's too depressing.

Or probably, I'm too clueless, and I should ask life_of_glamour where they would store this data. Hmmm. Forest inventory? https://www.fs.usda.gov/research/products/dataandtools/tools/forest-inventory-and-analysis-one-click-state-factsheets

Not specific enough. California has 10.72 Billion trees...
Redwood map: https://databasin.org/datasets/fb88f6afca7e48648f70d46e3b2e70c7/
Giant Sequoia map: https://databasin.org/datasets/5688c7d25ec34b29b0fef07737b90e72/

some fun predictions in databasin...

On page 8 of search results: Tree census of the UC Santa Cruz Redwood area (16 HA) (.06 sq miles)
https://www.mdpi.com/1999-4907/15/1/164

...hard to find.

Re: Pursuing this is fascinating

[learnteach]

Text: The combined impact of these two fires is estimated to be 2,261-3,637 sequoias over four feet in diameter that have already been killed or will die within the next three to five years. These losses make up an estimated 3-5% of the entire Sierra Nevada sequoia population over four feet in diameter. On top of the 10-14% of large sequoias lost in the 2020 Castle fire, these fire impacts represent a significant threat to large sequoia persistence.

From: https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/2021-fire-season-impacts-to-giant-sequoias.htm

Back math: 2,261x20 (5% loss) is the lower end, with 44,000 sequoia. 3637x33 (3 percent loss) is the higher estimate of 100911 trees. This is old growth; sequouia trees over 4' in diameter. This does not include coast redwoods.

The Guardian is wrong. But not wrong enough. The fire season means the problem is going to get much worse.

A little insight...

[learnteach]

https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/discover/nature/trees-plants/how-the-giant-sequoia-came-to-england

Re: A little insight...

[cvirtue]

British plant fads saved Japan’s cherry blossoms, which maybe you had heard of:

“His Japanese hosts were polite yet incredulous. How was it possible that the only surviving example of such a nationally revered tree grew in England?”

https://frustratedgardener.com/2019/03/27/cherry-ingram-the-englishman-who-saved-japans-blossoms/

Re: A little insight...

[learnteach]

I was unaware of this! Thank you very much!

Re: A little insight...

[threadwalker]

Wow!

[life_of_glamour]

Interesting!