Assistant Professor of Botany Steve Sillett (Humboldt State University, California) recently got word from some Australian climbers that they had climbed and measured a Eucalyptus regnans that topped out at 425 feet, 6 inches. This isn't rumor or historical reports, this is canopy researchers taking good measurements. Steve says the tallest known Sequioa sempervirons (coast redwood) standing today is 367 feet, 6 inches. There are some very active big-tree hunters in the redwoods with good surveying equipment, and Sillet has climbed a number of them to confirm measurements. The Dyerville giant was 376 feet when it toppled in the spring of 1990. The number of coast redwoods that top out within inches of all the other champions makes it appear that the species hits a glass ceiling around that height. As far as age goes, the wet climate of the coast can grow a champion redwood in a thousand years or so where it takes 3,000 years to grow a champion Sequioa gigantia in the higher, dry
er Sierras. The unanswe
rable question (by annual growth ring counts anyway) is the age of what I call "ring trees" where the original trunk has long since rotted away and the root system has continued to produce suckers around the perimeter that grow to full-sized trunks, die, and repeat the process. I have a scale drawing in my files of a madrone in California which has 20 living and two dead trunks in a oval ring 20 X 30 feet. How long did it take the root system to expand to that size? How many cycles of re-suckering? I also have photos of a California bay tree with 38 living trunks, and other photos of bays in all stages of progression from the central trunk going into decline and the perimeter suckers taking over. Tom Ness
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