Posts Tagged: redwoods
The Value of Trees.
by Rainer Hoenicke, UC Master Gardener of Napa County As I looked east toward Atlas Peak...
Eastern hills of Napa County. (geologycafe.com)
Streets and houses all over town show evidence of thoughtful tree planting. (redfin.com)
Another Napa home with trees front and back. (rexhomes.com)
Trees have extensive root systems. (padredam.org)
What trees mean to a community. (belmontcitizensforum.org)
All this magic in the leaf of a tree. (britannica.com)
Tree roots depend on fungi. (ias4sure.com)
Kennedy Park stuffed with trees. (yelp.com)
Fuller Park, more trees. (napavalleyregister.com)
A new park in American Canyon with shade trees of the future. (napavalleyregister.com)
Just think of the value of redwoods and oaks--and all trees--to our well-being. (fineartamerica.com)
Napa Registry of Significant Trees
Forest management can help giant sequoias and coastal redwoods survive
In 2020, 9,000 fires scorched more than 4 million acres of California, a record-breaking year, reported Alejandra Borunda in National Geographic. Fires burned through homes and oak forests, grasslands and pines — and also through patches of giant sequoias and coast redwoods, respectively the most massive and the tallest trees on earth.
Giant sequoias are not the oldest living trees, but some have been growing in Sierra Nevada forests for more than 3,200 years. They are found in 68 groves on the Sierra's western flank. The state's redwood forests grow in a narrow strip along the coast of Northern California and Southern Oregon.
The 2020 fires burned through about 16,000 acres of sequoia groves, about a third of their total area. In redwood forests of the Santa Cruz Mountains, 40,000 acres burned.
But because redwoods are well-adapted to fire, they'll likely recover pretty quickly, said Scott Stephens, a UC Berkeley fire scientist. “In some ways, this fire could make redwoods more dominant in the landscape," he said, because other trees — like the hardwoods or Douglas firs that crowded the local forests — died outright in the burns.
However, scientists are concerned one cause of the fires, climate change, could have additional impacts on these natural treasures.
Since the mid-1800s, temperatures in the western U.S. have increased by 1.6 degrees Fahrenheit. Fog banks are fading in coast redwood territory, and snows are less consistent in the Sierras. The changes leave redwoods and sequoias without their preferred climate conditions.
The most responsible thing to do now, Stephens said, is to “take the opportunity that has been handed to us,” and make a plan to go back in and burn again—soon, within the next few years.
UC Cooperative Extension forestry advisor Lenya Quinn-Davidson agrees that California must manage fire to help the trees survive. Tree-ring records show that humans have influenced the fire regime for better and worse as long as they've been in these forests.
“The empowering message there is, human management can actually override the effects of climate in a fire contest,” Quinn-Davidson said. “It's not just a climate story. We can't just throw in the towel, feel overwhelmed, and tell ourselves these trees are done for. That's not true!”
Thinking Some More About Your Redwoods?
From the Help Desk of the Master Gardeners of Contra Costa County
Client's Questions and Requests: (Originally from a phone call to the MGCC Help Desk...) I'm a new resident of central Contra Costa County having bought a house in Walnut Creek. The house and garden are probably 30-40 plus years old and mostly mature. There is a grove of 30-40 foot Redwood trees that look like they are doing o.k. and many other mature garden plants. We intend to do some remodeling on the house and garden which will include some new planting, but the redwood trees will remain in place for privacy and shade. In our replanting of parts of the garden we would like to utilize drought tolerant plants. We also have a creek adjacent to our property that we wish to protect with minimal disturbance. Do you have some guidance for us to consider as we rethink our garden.
Sequoia sempervirens
photo: UC IPM
As we discussed previously, We'd be reluctant to recommend planting redwood trees in central or east CCC (and with some reservations in west CCC). However, with your existing mature trees, the goal is to maintain their health and promote longevity. The links provided below provide information for redwood tree care and irrigation. You mentioned that the trees are very large and that they appear to be in good condition, so it is likely that after four years of drought they have been getting water from somewhere - maybe the nearby creek provides a high water table. However, even if we get rain this winter, drought conditions are likely to continue, and you may want to plan for future irrigation.
Although some mature trees can often survive one season with only one or two deep waterings during the spring and summer, several years without enough water can result in severe drought stress and even death. Drought-stressed trees can also be more prone to damage from diseases and insects as well as the effects of increased salts in the soil from lack of ample irrigation. Salts in the soil may also increase depending on the salinity of the irrigation water provided (such as may be the case with recycled water).
Here are some great articles about redwood cultivation in California that you may find helpful in deciding how to best approach improving and/or maintaining tree health:
- http://ccmg.ucdavis.edu/files/103008.pdf
- http://www.ipm.ucdavis.edu/PMG/GARDEN/PLANTS/redwood.html
- http://ucanr.org/sites/mgslo/newsletters/Trees42617.pdf
- http://www.ufei.org/files/pubs/Redwoods.pdf
The article in the link below addresses a new technique (TRIC) by UC horticulturists designed to water landscape trees by the home owner maximizing the use of water and insuring that water is reaching the drip line of the tree: http://ccuh.ucdavis.edu/public/drought/tree-ring-irrigation-contraption-tric-1/tree-ring-irrigation-contraption-tric. While TRIC system provides an effective optimal and automated solution, if the cost appears prohibitive, UC has now designed a simpler solution for less cost, but it requires more home owner attention and management (see RSIC).
You also asked about finding an arborist to inspect the health of your trees - the International Society of Arboriculture has a web tool to assist you in finding qualified members (i.e.,Certified Arborists) in your area: http://www.treesaregood.org/findanarborist/arboristsearch.aspx. You may want to consider a consulting arborist first as well as friends or neighbors for recommendations.
Finally, here is the link to the UC Davis Arboretum's list of good drought resistant plants for our area: http://arboretum.ucdavis.edu/arboretum_all_stars.aspx. We also have a lot more information on this subject should you need it.
Thank you for contacting Master Gardeners. I hope you will enjoy your new home, and if you have further questions please feel free to contact us again.
Help Desk of the Master Gardeners of Contra Costa County
Note: The UC Master Gardeners of Contra Costa's Help Desk is available year-round to answer your gardening questions. Except for a few holidays, we're open every week, Monday through Thursday for walk-ins from 9:00 am to Noon at 75 Santa Barbara Road, 2d Floor, Pleasant Hill, CA 94523. We can also be reached via telephone: (925) 646-6586, email: ccmg@ucanr.edu, or on the web at http://ccmg.ucanr.edu/Ask_Us/ MGCC Blogs can be found at http://ccmg.ucanr.edu/HortCoCo/ You can also subscribe to the Blog.
/span>Redwood Damage
The winds of late spring are an uncomfortable reality in Solano County. They blew through on June 8 and 9, blustery, drying north winds that disrupted graduation ceremonies, outdoor weddings and picnics at the park. Broken tree branches and piles of leaves and twigs, pushed up against north-facing fences and gutters, were evidence of the onslaught.
A realist would shrug off the loss of large branches as Mother Nature’s rather brutal pruning plan. Sometimes that’s a hard pill to swallow. A friend of ours lost the top third of a redwood tree planted in his front-yard lawn. When I heard this, I immediately thought of another friend who had recently told me about losing the top portion of a redwood tree on her property. Turns out, that loss was due to lack of water, but both of my friends now face a tricky situation: What do you do with a fast-growing evergreen that loses its terminal bud leader?
Redwoods that have been topped — whether by nature or humans — tend to freak out, sprouting from masses of dormant buds just below the topping cut and under the bark. This results in an extremely fast-growing tangled mess of unstable branches where once there was one tidy and elegant trunk. These masses are weak and tend to peel away in strong winds (which we know will return in late spring).
What my friends now face is quite possibly annual pruning of those redwoods. They must be prepared to maintain the sprouts and trim any large branches regularly. And they should consult with a certified arborist to do this work.
Redwood trees are considered to be wind-resistant trees. It appears my friend’s front-yard tree, though robust and healthy in appearance, faced prior stress and had become weakened somewhere along the way. Leave it to the winds of late spring to test that stress. Maybe it’s Mother Nature’s pruning plan after all.
Late spring’s strong north winds caused this otherwise healthy redwood tree to lose its leader. The tree is located in southeast Vacaville. (photo by Ken Williams)
CalTrans road project would impact dozens of redwoods
CalTrans' controversial plan to widen a stretch of Highway 101 in Northern California would impact more than the 54 trees the agency will remove, according to an Associated Press story that cited UC Berkeley forestry professor Joe McBride.
CalTrans wants to realign the section of the highway so it can be added to a national system of roads that cater to large trucks. The one-mile section is the only part of Highway 101 from San Francisco to the Oregon border where the large semi-trucks aren't permitted, except by a special exemption, the story said.
A vocal group of North Coast residents have asked a federal judge in San Francisco to stop the project.
McBride studied the site and Caltrans' plans. In a court document filed in support of the project's opponents, McBride said that Caltrans' arborists had not accurately stated the project's potential effects on the old-growth redwoods. McBride's analysis concluded that dozens more trees would die as a result of the work, and that the root systems of seven ancient redwoods would be negatively impacted.
"Substantial irreparable damage would occur to the trees in the project area as a result of the proposed project ... (which) would, in turn, cause negative impacts to the overall health of the forest in the vicinity of the project area," McBride wrote.
The judge's ruling is expected this week.
CalTrans wants to remove six redwoods for road project, but UC Berkeley scientist says more will be harmed.