How BIG Were TREES ? | The Biggest Trees in the World

our planet is home to more than ten thousand species of trees each with a name of its own but only one among them all is named after a human being this tree is Sequoia the German poet Heinrich hind said like a great poet nature produces the greatest results with the simplest means indeed when standing at the foot of such a breathtakingly huge living being you find yourself wondering how such a magnificent tree could grow from a small seed Sequoia is a survivor from prehistoric eons a pair of giant lizards that walked the earth millions of years ago the trees of this genus must remember t-rex is bellowing their battle cries Brachiosaurus scratching their necks against the mighty trunks and pterodactyls resting among the branches these titans are the tallest and oldest trees in the world sequoia bears the name of an outstanding man a cherokee leader who is known among Western colonists as George Geist his unique gift his people was a syllable system he invented specifically for writing in his native language this was one of a very few known cases of a preliterate nation creating a functional writing system of their own a trivia effect the Mac operating system as a font named Cherokee since the majestic trees require large amounts of water they preferred the humid seashore air of the Pacific coast curiously Sequoia is reproduced by seeds that can remain in the cones for up to two decades forest fires dry out the cones and help them open and the seeds fall on the soil that is free of weeds and rich in nutrients the redwood tree would not be able to grow for thousands of years without a powerful means of protection its hardy bark grows up to one foot thick with Stan's fire and shields the hardwood from he safe behind this armored sequoias can only benefit from forest fires which wipe out the undergrowth the Giants natural competition unlike other tree sequoias don't die due to the ground level rising after floods earthquakes or landslides the redwood giant simply grow a new tier of side roots at the right height and bolster the trunk one one-thousand two hundred year old fallen sequoia had as many as seven different tiers of side roots and the first tier was 11 feet apart from the last other specimens have survived a 30 feet rise in the ground level despite their ability to survive countless threats the Giants could not withstand the arrival of humans during the goldrush era the region was flooded with enterprising fortune seekers and lumber industry thrive an experienced lumberjack was making up to $125 a month which roughly equals $4,100 in today's money unlucky prospectors gladly switched to logging supplying the endless stream of migrants with timber the principal building material of the era the first felled Sequoia was cut down only in order to find out whether such a feat was at all possible industrial scale harvesting of the giant redwoods began in earnest by 1853 nine sawmills in Humboldt County supplied Sequoia timber to construction companies carpenters and furniture shops magnificent ancient living beings were cut apart and used for decorating rail cars and steamer cabins for roofing materials and telegraph poles as well as for production of paper furniture and barrels the hardy timber worked well as the outer layer of walls protecting inner layers from termites bark beetles and Miller moths sequoias were indispensable in the construction of bridges fire exits and firewalls even Palisades that provided frontier settlements with some degree of safety were built using redwood timber loggers felled the Giants manually with axes and two-handed saws the timber was then transported on horseback or flown down rivers later people began to connect sawmills with timber consuming workshops via railway tracks transporting one Sequoia tree required about 60 rail cars it took literally a couple of decades to cut down about 95% of the towering trees in 1850 the total area of the redwood forest exceeded 3,100 square miles which was roughly the size of the Greek island of Crete in our times this ancient royalty among the trees occupies a small stretch of land about 450 miles long the sheer scale of industrial harvesting is staggering what forest fires and bark beetles could not accomplish over millions of years humans did in the blink of an eye in the words of Jake Sully in the movie Avatar I'm probably just talking to a tree right now but if you're there I need to give you a heads up to be fair at the height of the Civil War Abraham Lincoln decided to declare the big tree the symbol of the Republic On June xxx 1864 he signs the Yosemite grant Act protecting the Mariposa big tree Grove however despite all the respect for the 16th President and the national hero commanded settlers kept cutting redwoods in other places industrial gain wasn't the only reason for which the Giants of the plant world were ruthlessly felled humans have always been attracted by grand objects although this attraction often takes on ugly forms the huge Sequoia named Mark Twain with the trunk of 33 feet in diameter had long been a tempting target and in 1891 was finally cut down the New York Museum of national history and the British Museum in London still have sections of the trunk on display a particularly striking exhibition in Europe involved one huge cutout disc holding an entire Orchestra with a grand piano and a troop of 35 dancers while another was used as a foundation for a printing shop that published a newspaper called the giant tree bulletin the world's largest plank over 330 feet long was supposed to arrive at the International Exhibition in Paris but the much advertised event never happened not a single sea captain was brave enough to take this kind of cargo across the ocean it's hard to blame him these unique living beings were used as private houses garages for national park visitors a restaurant sitting 50 guests and a huge hotel inside a 42 ton log people even managed to make a tunnel in the trunk of a Sequoia called Wawona tree the age of this tree was estimated at 2,100 years its height measuring 234 feet and the diameter of the trunk at its base 26 feet the tunnel was cut out in 1881 by widening an old lightning burn it quickly became a tourist attraction and with the wider spread of automotive transport photographs of people passing through the tree in their cars became especially popular in early 1969 the Willona tree collapsed under the weight of snow on its crown in 1901 Theodore Roosevelt stood up for the fate of the ancient Titans the 26th President was a big fan of outdoor activities and after reading the book California mountains by John Moyer the founding father of Yosemite National Park he set off on a three-day hike with the author to Mariposa Grove where the fate of sequoias was decided in their own majestic shade these evergreens skyscrapers were finally recognized as a singular natural wonder how it was not until 1918 that the harvesting of the prehistoric Giants was stopped and the nonprofit organization saves the Redwoods League was created sequoias have officially become a national landmark only about thirty groves of these truly magnificent trees have survived to this day people have given individual names to the most remarkable sequoia specimen president forest mother chief sequoia the Senate chandelier Willona tree grizzly giant and even to Lincoln's each one has impressive characteristics of its own for example the 400-foot tall father of woods has a trunk diameter of 40 feet founder is 367 feet high and patriarch according to some sources measures higher than 473 feet the coast redwood variety is considered the tallest tree in the world while sequoiadendron giganteum has the widest trunk the relatively young only 700 to 800 year old redwood Hyperion discovered only in 2006 and named after a mythological Titan has grown to 377 feet scientists say that the further growth of the tree is impossible due to the omnipresent woodpeckers damaging the top which is surprising because birds do not particularly favor sequoia forests among the Giants General Sherman is especially famous thanks to its outstanding measurements the estimated trunk volume of 50 2513 cubic feet the trunk circumference at the ground of 103 feet the span of the crown of 130 feet the height of 275 feet and the total weight including the crown coming to 1910 tons in the mid 1940s a sequoia of even greater volume than General Sherman was felled the crane L Creek giant was estimated to be about 15 to 25% larger earlier the age of Sherman was believed to be over 3,000 years but recent studies have shown that the legendary tree is 2200 years old in 2006 the veteran lost part of its crown a 100 foot long 6.5 feet wide branch despite the loss Sherman keeps growing and the annual increases of its volume amounts to enough timber to build a five or six bedroom house according to some sources in 1965 another giant aged 4480 4 was cut down despite the massive losses attributed to the large scale harvesting in the past it's believed that even five millennia old redwoods possibly still exists somewhere and even that is only an approximate figure since the exact age of such a tree is difficult to establish what if one of these giants witnessed mastodons pastoring among the trunks considering the ability of sequoias to withstand fires and parasites it's quite possible perhaps the most mysterious among the redwoods are the so called ghosts of the forest or albino trees this phenomenon can only be found in the thick of an evergreen grove the first documented sighting of an albino tree was recorded in 1866 and their very existence was an enigma these puzzling trees mentioned in Native American lore have been viewed by scientists as parasites that stole food from healthy green trees however sequoias have long millennia to develop the effective flow of nutrients so why would these veteran survivors allow their pale counterparts to feed on their SAP although in the animal kingdom melanin is not considered critical for survival albinism among plants is different the presence of chlorophyll is the most important factor for the life and growth of green plants an albino tree can get nutrients only thanks to another trees root system at the same time cleansing the nourishing tree from the harmful toxins of cadmium copper and nickel the products of coal burning as well as all sorts of waste mining dumps gasoline etc essentially the ghosts of the forests poisoned themselves while getting their food albinos cannot dump the toxins back into the soil and therefore live less than their green relatives thus this relationship is more beneficial to normal trees and even less common occurrence is chimera trees where white yellow and green needles can grow on the same branch and the affected branches die off and grow again in the same place with all their remarkable phenomenon and grand size sequoias are not unlike the tree of souls of the Navi in Avatar the oldest tree that shares with other sentient beings ancestral memories and wisdom of course that's only a fantasy vision of a far-off planet but the indisputable fact is what the English poet and thinker William Blake said the tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing that stands in the way to the eyes of the man of imagination nature is imagination itself [Music] [Music] you

Channel: MAD LAB

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Keywords: tress, sequoia, tree, tallest tree, biggest tree, largest trees, oldest trees, nature, tallest trees in the world, oldest trees in the world, big trees, sequoia park, sequoia national park, forest, biggest trees in the world, redwood, earth, top trees, huge, biggest, tallest, oldest, mad lab

Id: K_ZDurZUjdg

Length: 11min 15sec (675 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 18 2019