Resource Library
Plant of the Week: Sierra Redwood (Giant Sequoia)
The University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture does not promote, support or recommend plants featured in "Plant of the Week." Please consult your local Extension office for plants suitable for your region.
Plant of the Week
Giant Sequoia, Sierra Redwood
Latin: Sequoiadendron giganteum
Nature has many spectacular sights if one is only willing to look. The scene that
really blew my socks off was seeing the grandeur of the giant sequoia. I knew they
were big, but I had no idea just how big. I live on the side of Mt. Sequoia in Fayetteville
and the trunk of the General Sherman behemoth is as wide as my house is long and as
tall as a 30 story building. By any measure, that’s impressive.
Two redwood species occur in California -- the Coastal Redwood, Sequoia sempervirens,
which occupies a narrow strip of land in the fog belt in the northern half of the
state, and the Giant Sequoia which occurs in the dry Sierra Nevada range at elevations
from 5,000 to 8,000 feet in the west-central part of the state. For those who like
the anorexic look of today’s models, the coastal redwood will be your favorite; but
for those of us who can identify with a bulging waist line, the squatty giant sequoias
are for you.
Naming the most impressive North American trees after a native American Cherokee
was an appropriate, but somewhat surprising, choice. Chief Sequoia was born around
1770 in eastern Tennessee, where he lived when he developed his famous Cherokee alphabet.
In 1818, he left his eastern home with the gentle persuasion of government policy
and moved near present day Russellville in Arkansas Territory, where he ran a blacksmith
shop and had a small salt spring. In 1828 he went to Washington and was one of the
Cherokee delegation that signed the treaty designating the land west of a line extending
north from Fort Smith to the northern boundary of Arkansas Territory as the new Cherokee
Nation homeland. Sequoia relocated to his farm north of Sallisaw, OK in 1828. In 1843
Sequoia died along a trail in northern Mexico attempting to locate a lost band of
Cherokee that was rumored to be in the area.
The coastal redwood was first discovered by botanists in the 1790's and was initially
classified as a type of bald cypress. In 1847, the Austrian botanist Stephan Endlicher
reclassified the coastal redwood into a new genus he named after Sequoia, who was
reported missing and presumed dead. The big trees were not discovered until the Walker
Expedition of 1833 and they were recognized as a new species of the genus Sequoia
in 1854 by a French botanist name Decaisne. In 1939, a University of Illinois botanist
named J. T. Buchholtz counted chromosomes and reclassified the Giant Sequoia into
its own genus, Sequoiadendron.
That there are any Giant Sequoias still standing has a lot to do with physics. Loggers
could hardly resist "harvesting" such forest giants, but their sheer bulk made them
unusable. Several trees were felled in the late 1800's, but their immense weight,
estimated to be 2.7 million pounds, converted them to splintered wood when they came
crashing down. The wood of this species is coarse textured with a tendency for splintering.
The redwood of commerce is the coastal species. Preservation of these trees was begun
in 1864 when Abraham Lincoln transferred the land around the Yosemite Valley and the
Mariposa Big Tree Grove to California. In 1890, it was deeded back to the federal
government and became the nucleus of today’s Yosemite National Park.
The Giant Sequoia should grow in Arkansas, but I personally know of no trees in the
state. A tree grows on the grounds of the nation’s capitol, surely no cooler or less
humid than Little Rock. Numerous Giant Sequoias are reported up and down the East
Coast. In cultivation, the evergreen tree tends to be short and squatty with a rounded
head, but the oldest trees are only about 100 years old. Maybe when the tree reaches
its mature age of 3500 years, it will be taller.
By: Gerald Klingaman, retired
Extension Horticulturist - Ornamentals
Extension News - September 3, 1999
The University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture does not maintain lists of retail outlets where these plants can be purchased. Please check your local nursery or other retail outlets to ask about the availability of these plants for your growing area.