REDWOOD
(Sequoia Sempervirens)

This tree’s color is responsible for its name. It is sometimes spoken of as coast redwood to distinguish it from bigtree which grows in the interior of California. In European markets it is known as California redwood to distinguish it from other redwoods growing in distant parts of the world. Its botanical name, Sequoia sempervirens, means evergreen sequoia. The other species of sequoia is also evergreen. In reality, the coast redwood is less of an evergreen than the bigtree is, because the leaves of redwood turn brown two years before they fall, but there are always plenty of green leaves on the branches. The leaves are from one-quarter to one-half inch in length.

The geographical range of redwood covers about 6,000 square miles, but the commercial range is scarcely one-fifth as much. The redwood belt extends 500 miles along the Pacific coast from southern Oregon to central California. It varies from ten to thirty miles in width. It is strictly a fog belt tree, and grows poorly outside the region of ocean fog, which seldom reaches an altitude more than 2,800 feet above sea level. Where fog is thick and frequent, and soil is moist and otherwise suitable, redwood forests have grown in such luxuriance that no species in this country exceeds it. Stands running much over 100,000 feet per acre are frequent, and it is said 1,000,000 feet have been cut from a single acre.

Redwood cones are one inch or less in length. They ripen in one season. Seeds are quite small, and are equipped with wings. The bark is thick, but is much thinner than the bark of bigtrees, though it is in great ridges like the bark of that species. The habits of the two species, as to form of crown, are similar. Young redwoods, particularly if they grow in the open, develop symmetrical and conical crowns which they retain until the trunks are a foot or more in diameter. Lower limbs die and fall off after that, and old trees have crowns so small that it would seem impossible that they could supply the wood-building material for trunks so large. That the growth should be slow under such circumstances is to be expected. The ages of mature trees vary from 500 to 800 years, but an extreme age of 1,373 years is on record. The average is, therefore, considerably below that of bigtrees.

Redwoods grow as tall as bigtrees, but do not equal them in diameter of trunk, though trees twenty feet in diameter occur.

A noticeable feature of the forests is that, in a given stand, nearly all trees are of the same height, irrespective of size of trunk. The crowns go up to the light and when they reach the common level of others, and secure a share of light, they show no disposition to go higher. The doctrine which they silently put into practice is to live and let others live. That habit makes it possible for redwoods to grow in very dense stands, which they could not do if a few trees domineered over the others, and appropriated the light to themselves.

When old age overtakes the giant redwoods, they exhibit the first symptoms of weakened vitality by dying at the top. Most trees over five hundred years old are “stag-headed.” From that period they die slowly, but usually survive two or three hundred years after the visible signs of approaching death strike them.

Redwood has an advantage over nearly all other needle-leaf trees in that it propagates by both seeds and sprouts. Few softwoods send up sprouts from stumps or roots. Redwoods of large size are produced that way, and the stumps of very old trees send up many vigorous shoots. Sometimes a ring of large trees surrounds a depression in the ground where the parent tree grew, died, and decayed.

Sprouts are of course confined to the immediate proximity of the parent tree, but redwood seeds are scattered by the wind over vacant spaces. This results in dense stands where other conditions are favorable, but the species has never been able to establish itself far inland or high on mountains.

In 1880 the Federal census made a rough estimate of the available redwood, and placed it at 25,825,000,000 feet. More than twenty years later, with heavy cutting all the time, private estimates placed the remaining stand at over 50,000,000,000 feet. The second estimate was unquestionably nearer correct than the first. The stand of no important timber tree in this country is more easily estimated than redwood. The forests are compact, the trees large, the trunks similar in form, and the well-timbered area is comparatively small. Redwood has been called the most important timber tree of the Pacific coast. The title probably confers too much, though the tree’s importance is beyond question. The annual cut of Douglas fir is nearly ten times as large as of redwood, and the supply still in the forests is much greater than that of redwood. The cut of western yellow pine likewise exceeds the output of redwood, and the remaining supply is larger. The cut of western red cedar, including shingles, is about the same, and the remaining stand of cedar is very large. Western hemlock, too, exists in large quantity, and its importance as a source of timber supply may be equal to redwood.

Redwood is frequently referred to as one of the lightest in this country. Its weight per cubic foot, oven-dry, is 26.2 pounds. On the same basis, white pine is 24, southern white cedar 20.7, northern white cedar 19.7, and bigtree 18.2. There are woods in Florida lighter than any of these. Redwood is very soft, yet it dulls tools quickly. It is moderately strong, a little below white pine; it is brittle, again ranking below white pine; it splits and works easily and polishes well. Few, if any woods surpass this one in splitting properties. Boards twelve feet long and a foot wide may be rived from selected logs, and they present surfaces nearly as smooth as if cut with a saw. However, curly and wavy redwood is not uncommon, and that, too, splits well, but the surface is not smooth. The width of annual rings varies, usually wide in young timber and narrow in old. The bands of summerwood are narrow and clearly defined. The surface of redwood lumber absorbs water quickly, yet, for some reason, creosote and other preservatives can be forced into the wood only with the greatest difficulty. Fortunately, it is not necessary to treat this timber to prevent decay, for, in almost any position, it wears out before it rots. Shingles, and window and door frames of the old barracks buildings at Eureka, California, remained in place until fifty years of wind and driven sand wore them away. Railroads use the wood for ties until they wear out, not until they rot out. Farmers near some of the California railroads gather up the rejected worn ties by thousands and use them for fence posts. When redwood is employed as city paving blocks it is wear and not decay that puts them out of commission.

The medullary rays of redwood are thin and very obscure, but numerous. Few woods show them to less advantage in quarter-sawing. The lack of luster in the surface of polished panels is well known. The wood’s beauty is in its sameness and richness of color. Except curly specimens and burls, the wood may be said to have no figure, though in planks cut tangentially, the contrast of spring and summerwood displays some figure in a modest way. It is possible to wash much of the coloring matter out of the wood, if it is first chipped fine. It washes from the surface by ordinary exposure to weather. Red rainwater runs from a roof of new redwood shingles, and weatherboarding, posts, and picket fences fade perceptibly in a few months. This coloring matter when washed out in large amounts in the process of paper making has been manufactured into fuel gas.

A complete list of the uses of redwood is not practicable, for this material goes into most of the large wood-using factories of this country, and much is exported—nearly 60,000,000 feet annually going to foreign countries. It has been much employed in California cities and towns for picket fences, and as posts for wire and plank fences. It is, next to western red cedar, the most important shingle wood of the Pacific coast. One western railroad alone had in its tracks 12,000,000 redwood ties at one time. Builders of tanks, flumes, and water pipes procure some of their best material, and large quantities of it, from redwood sawmills. Few woods are more universally found in furniture factories.