Sequoia National Park (USA, California)

Sequoia National Park

Sequoia National Park is about 130 kilometers away from Fresno, Central California, by highway.
Sequoia forests were first discovered by Europeans on the coast of the Pacific Ocean in 1769. By the color of its wood sequoia then got its name – Redwood which is used even until now. In 1847, an Austrian botanist Stephan Endlicher made these plants a separate genus and called it “sequopia” after the name of an outstanding chief of the Iroquois (Sequoyah, 1770-1843), who invented the alphabet of the Cherokee tribe.

Excavated fossils tell us that these giant trees existed as early as in Jurassic period, between 208 and 144 million years ago, spreading on vast territories in the northern hemisphere.

Sequoia National Park was founded in 1890 to protect natural sequoia forests which were becoming extinct.
Sequoia – is a genus of evergreen coniferous trees in the family Taxodiaceae. According to one of the classifications the family Taxodiaceae belongs to the subclass of Pinidae or Coniferae, which, in turn, belongs to the class of Pinopsida, from the order Gymnospermae.

The sole living species – evergreen sequoia or redwood (S. sempervirens) is considered to be the symbol of the California State; it is one of tallest and most long-living trees on earth, famous for its beautiful, straightgrained and decay-resistant wood.

Sequoia has the most valuable timber among the swamp cypress family – it has red core and light yellow or white sapwood (sapwood – is the layers of wood between the core and cambium). The bark of the tree is thick, reddish in color, deeply furrowed. The quality of wood varies not only depending on the place of growth but it may be even different in the same log. The head is narrow and it starts above the lower one third of the trunk. Oval cones and short sprouts with flat bluish-grey needles make sequoia look beautiful and magnificent. Root system is composed of shallow, wide-spreading lateral roots.

Sequoia’s reproduction organs (as well as in the entire coniferous family) are strobili – modified short sprouts bearing special leaves – sporophylls, on which sporea-producing organs, sporangia, are formed. There are male strobili (they are called microstrobili) and female strobili (megastrobili). Sequoia is a monoecious plant (microstrobili and megastrobili grow on the same tree). Microstrobili are single, they are located on top of sprouts or in leaves axils. Megastrobili are gathered in single small oval-shaped cones. One of sequoia’s special characteristics is its ability to produce many shoots that do not differ from seedlings in their speed of growth or in their life term. Sequoia forests in the United States consist, mainly, of trees that grew in this very manner.

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