Identifying the Three Species of Redwood Trees
Coast Redwood, Giant Sequoia and Dawn Redwood are Related Conifers
Redwoods are iconic trees, celebrated for their size, beauty and rarity.
The Coast Redwood and Giant Sequoia are native today to only the foggy slopes of the Sierra Nevada range in California and a small slice of southwestern Oregon. Tourists flock to the redwood forests, and the trees are the subject of ongoing conservation efforts.
While the three trees share similar characteristics, each is also distinctive. Below is a summary of the traits to look for.
Coast Redwood (Sequoia sempervirens)
These trees are easy to identify because of their sprays of flat needles. Needles are a dark green and appear almost as if they’d been lightly polished. As they grow toward the light, lower branches drop, leaving foliage only in the crown high above the forest floor. The needles can often be seen at eye level, however, because redwoods are able to sprout new branches from the base of the trunk. Trees grow to 350 feet and can live more than 2,000 years.
The reddish bark feels soft and – when wet – spongy. It is resistant to fire, insects and decay.
Native Americans made extensive use of fallen redwoods. They split the wood to make plank houses, and hollowed trees for dugout canoes. The wood also provided material for furniture, boxes, and fishing tools. The soft bark was used for baskets and even clothing.
For all their size, coast redwoods have relatively small cones, seldom over an inch long and roundish.
The name “sempervirens” means always green.
Giant Sequoia (Sequoiadendron giganteum)
The needles of the giant sequoia are strikingly different from the coast redwood: they grow scale-like or “awl-shaped” around the twig. The trees can grow to more than 250 feet with massive trunks.
Like the coast redwoods, the bark of giant sequoias is soft and resistant to fire, insects and rot. Also like the coast redwood, these trees are long-lived.
Cones of the sequoia are up to three inches long. Cones can remain on the tree for many years before opening to release their seeds.
Sequoias shed their lower branches as they grow toward the sun, leaving foliage mostly clustered near the top. However, sequoias and coast redwoods have been successfully cultivated in parks, particularly in the Pacific Northwest, where plenty of light allows them to grow in a beautiful conical shape.
Dawn Redwood (Metasequoia glyptostroboides)
The North American landscape of the dinosaurs included extensive stands of dawn redwoods. Their range extended over much of the temperate globe, as well, but botanists saw them only in the fossil record until 1944 when living trees were found in a remote area of China. Seeds from those trees were sent to the Arnold Arboretum in Boston where they were successfully cultivated and shared. Today they are often considered living fossils.
In the Pacific Northwest, cultivated dawn redwoods grace many parks with their fresh, lacy foliage. Needles are in flat sprays like coast redwoods, but much softer and more delicate.
The dawn redwoods are unusual conifers in that they are deciduous. In fall, the foliage turns golden before the needles drop, leaving the branches bare.
Dawn redwoods generally grow to less than 100 feet tall. Their cones are round and about an inch in diameter.
Most of the naturally growing coast redwoods and giant sequoias are now in reserves, including Redwood National Park in California.
Several cultivars of redwoods have been developed for gardens, including the Los Altos, Santa Cruz and Aptos Blue redwood varieties.
Sources:
Trees of the Pacific Northwest, by George A. Petrides, Stackpole Books,Mechanicsburg, PA, 2005.
Hoyt Arboretum, 4000 SW Fairview Blvd, Portland, Oregon, phone 503-228-8732.
Save the Redwoods League, San Francisco, CA
Young Giant Sequoias
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Coast Redwood Bark
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Coast Redwood Needles
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Giant Sequoia Needles
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Dawn Redwood
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